Secularism and Relation between Religion and the State from the Perspective of the Nahdha Party by Rached Ghannouchi

Source: Facebook

Full Transcript of Rached Ghannouchi’s lecture on Secularism – 2 March 2012

Mr. Rached Ghannouchi, President of the Nahdha Party in Tunisia, gave an important and historic lecture at CSID-Tunisia last Friday, March 2nd, on « Secularism and Relation between Religion and the State from the Perspective of the Nahdha Party », which was then followed by a frank and open debate with leading scholars, activists, civil society leaders, and politicians from accross the full spectrum, as well as representatives of the Moroccan, Algerian, Egyptian, and American diplomatic missions.

The audience also included the Head of the Constituent Assembly Mustapha Ben Ja’afar, President of ALESCO Muhammad Al-’Aziz Ibn ‘Ashour, the Head of the Higher Committee for Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in Tunisia Noureddine Hachad, as well as the leaders of various political Parties such as Muhammad Goumani, Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Hani, Murad Ruissi, Muhammad Busairi Bouabdelli, and Khaled Traouli.

Transcript of Rached Ghannouchi’s speech:

In the name of God, prayers and peace be upon His Messenger, his household, companions, and supporters.

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters may God’s peace and blessings be upon you.

I thank the Centre for the Study of Islam and Democracy for giving me the opportunity this evening to speak to this distinguished elite of Tunisian men and women and those coming from abroad. I am not here to teach you anything, since the subject we are here to discuss has no set instructions to be delivered but rather only points of view to be deepened and efforts to reach a common ground that would enable our elite to reach a consensus or at least a quasi-consensus.

Our topic is quite problematic in the sense that it deals with the Islam’s relationship to secularism. Is this relationship one of conflict and discord or one of harmony and overlap? Related to this question are issues such as Islam’s relationship to governance, the relation between Islam and Law, which are all contentious matters.

It seems that when we speak of secularism and Islam, as if we are talking about evident and clear concepts. However, a non-negligible amount of ambiguity and multiplicity of understandings surround these concepts, in that we are not talking about ‘a’ secularism but rather a multitude of secularisms as is the case with Islam, by virtue of what is proposed in the arena, we are faced with various understandings of what it means.

Although secularism seems as if it was a philosophy and the fruit of philosophical reflections and meditations which came to fight idealist and religious outlooks, it is not so. Secularism appeared, evolved, and crystallized in the West as procedural solutions, and not as a philosophy or theory of existence, to problems that had been posed in the European context. Most of these problems emerged following the Protestant split in the West, which tore apart the consensus that had been dominant in the Catholic Church, and imposed the religious wars in the 16th and 17th century. It was thus that Secularism and/or secularization began.

This leads us to ask the following question: are we in need of secularism in its procedural aspect? Perhaps the most important idea in the ensemble of these procedures is the idea of the state’s neutrality i.e. towards religions and its abstention from interfering with people’s consciences. Whereas, the state’s scope or jurisdiction is limited to the ‘Public Domain’, religion’s scope extends to the ‘Private’. In the United States religious interference in the public domain is evident, despite the differentiation that exists there remains a significant religious influence. Their leaders’ speeches are laden with religious content and references, and religion is debated in all electoral campaigns where it manifests itself in issues such as prayer in schools and abortion. This in reality is due to the fact that America was founded by evangelical pilgrims fleeing with their religion from the Catholic Church’s persecution in Europe. It is for this reason that the U.S. is looked at as the Promised Land, the land of dreams mentioned in the Torah and Gospels.

As the Franco-American thinker Tocqueville once remarked that the Church is the most powerful party in the United States. This is by virtue of the huge influence that it enjoys, though this is not the case in Europe. Whereas the number of those who can lead prayer in the US exceeds 50%, in Europe it does not reach 5%.

In the European context, also, there are differences in the state’s relationship with religion between the French heritage and Anglo-Saxon one, whereby in the UK the Queen combines the temporal and the religious powers. The complete separation is the one that is associated with the French experience, which resulted from the clashes that took place in French history between the revolutionaries’ state and the Catholic Church. Even in Europe, therefore, we are not dealing with one experience in secularism, perhaps for our purposes, since our elite is influenced by the particular French perspective (particular even for Europeans) where religion is totally excluded from the public sphere and the state considers itself as the sole guardian of national identity. This exclusion of the religious and its symbols from the public domain is what lead France to be the only country that refused the covering of heads for Muslim women, while we don’t see such a crisis in any other European country over the issue of headscarves. This is exclusively due to the particular nature of the relationship between state and religion in France which was the result of a particular historical experience.

We in turn are not faced with one understanding; perhaps the most important procedure invented by the secular worldview on this level is the state’s neutrality. In other words, the state is the guarantor of all freedoms be them religious, political or otherwise. And the state should not interfere in favor of this or that party. We pose the following question now: Is Islam in need of such a procedure? i.e. the state’s neutrality towards the various religions.

Islam, since its inception, has always combined religion with politics, religion and state. The Prophet (peace be upon him) was the founder of the religion as well as the state. The first pledge of allegiance made by the group of Madina who came to Mecca was a religious pledge to believe in Allah and his Messenger. But the second pledge was to protect the Muslims, even by sword, should al-Madina be attacked. Al-Madina, and this expression is of the utmost importance, used to be called Yathrib before becoming Al-Madina (The City) which implies that Islam is not merely a religion but also carries a civilizational meaning. It is a transferring of people from Bedouin life to urban/civilizational life. This is why ‘Bedouinization’ was considered a great sin once urbanization had been achieved. No wonder then that wherever Islam went it established cities and our country hosts the oldest city built by Arabs in North Africa. Therefore, The City founded by the Prophet (pbuh) is a clear indication that Islam is a religion of civilization, whereby it shifted those warring tribes from a Bedouin level to a civilized one and united them around a state.

The Prophet (pbuh) was a an imam in the religious sense as he lead prayers in mosques, and at the same time a political imam that arbitrated people’s disputes, lead armies, and signed various accords and treaties. Of relevance to us is the fact that upon his arrival to Medina he established a mosque and put in place a constitution that was called Al-Sahifah. You have precedents here Mustapha! [In reference to Mr Mustapha Ben Ja'afar, President of the Constituent Assembly, who was present in the audience]. This Sahifah, which is one of the oldest constitutions in the world, contained a bundle of covenants regulating the relations between Meccan immigrants and their hosts (these were considered as one nation) and the Jewish tribes of Madina (also considered a nation). Al-Sahifa considered these two religious nations as comprising one political nation and entity that is distinct from others. The most important concept offered by such scholars as Muhammad Salim Al ‘Awwa and Muhammad ‘Umar is the distinction between the religious and the political as corresponding to the separation between state and religion.

The distinction between that which is political and that which is religious is clear in the Sahifah in that Muslims are a religious nation (ummah) and the Jews another, but the combination of the two plus other polytheists made up a nation in the political sense. This distinction can be witnessed in the Prophet’s dealings even if the boundaries were not always clear. Whereas the religious is the sphere of observance and obligation, the political is the sphere of reason and Ijtihad. At times when the ambiguity confused the companions, they would ask the Prophet (pbuh) whether this is divine revelation (wahy) or a mere opinion. In the case of the former they would obey, and when it is the latter they may differ and offer alternatives. On more than one occasion did the companions differ with the Prophet (pbuh) in his capacity as the head of state, and Sheikh Tahar Ben Ashour has dealt in detail with the topic of what he called ‘Prophetic Statuses’.

One day the Prophet (pbuh) passed by a group in Medina cross-pollinating palm trees and said: ‘I do not see the benefit of doing so.’ The Medinan people thought that that was divine revelation and stopped treating their trees which made their harvest of that year of a lesser quality. They asked him why he ordered them to do so, and he replied: you are best placed to know what is beneficial for you in your worldly affaires. Therefore, it is not the duty of religion to teach us agricultural, industrial or even governing techniques, because reason is qualified to reach these truths through the accumulation of experiences. The role of religion, however, is to answer the big question for us, those relating to our existence, origins, destiny, and the purpose for which we were created, and to provide us with a system of values and principles that would guide our thinking, behaviour, and the regulations of the state to which we aspire.

So, Islam since its inception and throughout its history has not known this separation between state and religion in the sense of excluding religion from public life. And Muslims, to this day, have been influenced by Islam and inspired by its teachings and guidance in their civic life, with the distinction remaining clear. This distinction between the religious and the political is also clear in the thought of Islamic scholars/jurists. They have distinguished between the system of transactions/dealings (Mu’amalat) and that of worship (‘Ibadat). Whereas the latter is the domain of constancy and observance i.e. reason cannot reach the truth, the former is the domain of searching for the general interest, for Islam came to realize people’s interests as confirmed by such great jurists as Al-Shatibi and Ibn ‘Ashour. These scholars have agreed that the highest objective of all divine messages is to establish justice and realize people’s interests, and this is done through the use of reason in light of the guidelines, objectives, values, and principles provided by religion. Thus, there is a domain of transactions/dealings which is constantly evolving and represents the sphere of variables, and there is the domain of creed, values, and virtues which represents the sphere of constants.

Throughout Islamic history, the state has always been influenced by Islam in one way or another in its practices, and its laws were legislated for in light of the Islamic values as understood at that particular time and place. Despite this, states remained Islamic not in the sense that their laws and procedures were divinely revealed, but that they were human endeavours open to challenge and criticism. States have also practiced a degree of neutrality, and when they tried to interfere and impose one understanding on Muslims, as happened in the Abbasids state, it sparked revolution. It is mentioned that al-Mansour had become concerned with the multitude of religious views and interpretations emanating from the same religion and feared their divisive effect on the state. So he sent for Imam Malik and asked him to amalgamate all these in one to unify people’s outlooks. Imam Malik produced his famous book al-Muwatta’, with which al-Mansour was greatly pleased and wanted it to become a law that binds all Muslims. This horrified Imam Malik and asked for it not to be made so, because the Prophet’s companions have travelled to different lands and took with them much knowledge, so allow people to choose what they see fit. This is why we see that one school of thought is dominant in the Maghreb, while another is so in the Levant, and yet another in Egypt…etc

It is due to the absence of a church in Islam that what remains is the freedom of thought and interpretation. This will naturally lead to a diversity in interpretation, and there is no harm in that except when we need to legislate, at which time we are in need of a mechanism, and the best mechanism that mankind has come up with is the electoral and democratic one which produces representatives of the nation and makes these interpretations a collective as opposed to an individual effort. Again, in the absence of a church representing the sacred on earth and a spokesperson of the Qur’an, the nation is the only manifestation of divine will through its interactions and not any particular scholar, party, or state.

When al-Ma’moun (Abbassid Caliph) wanted to impose one interpretation of the Quran and one particular understanding of Islamic creed (that of the Mu’tazili school), Imam Ahmed Ibn Hanbal revolted and refused the state’s attempt to dominate religion. This lead to him being persecuted and tortured, but in the end he managed to turn public opinion against the state and force al-Ma’moun to cede.

While the problematique in the west revolved around ways of liberating the state from religion and lead to destructive wars, in our context the problem is one of liberating religion from the state and preventing it from dominating religion, and keeping the latter in the societal realm, open to all Muslims to read the Qur’an and understand it in the manner that they deem appropriate, and that there is no harm in the plurality that is combined with tolerance. But should Muslims be in need of laws, the democratic mechanism is the best embodiment of the Shura (consultation) value in Islam.

It is of the utmost importance that our heritage is devoid of a church. Maybe only our Shi’ah brothers hold the belief in a religious institution, but in the Sunni world there is no such a thing save for a council of scholars which are usually in disagreement and hold different views. For this reason, we are in need of scholars and intellectuals to debate and study our issues in a climate of freedom and accept that the legislative institution is the ultimate authority by virtue of being elected.

There is a debate that is currently ongoing in our country between secular currents which may be described as extremist and Islamist ones which may be described in like manner. One would like to impose their understanding of Islam from above using state tools and apparatuses and the other aspires to strip the state, educational curricula, and national culture of all Islamic influences. At a time when the whole world, including the Islamic world, is witnessing a religious awakening, and having seen the role played by the Catholic Church in the development of Eastern Europe, starting with the efforts of Pope John Paul II, and also the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the success of Putin’s presidential campaign. At such a junction in time, it is unreasonable to object to religious influence on the state’s cultural and educational policies. In fact, we do not need do impose Islam because it is the people’s religion and not the elite’s, and Islam has not endured for so long because of states’ influence but rather due to the large acceptance it enjoys among its adherents, in fact the state has often been a burden on religion.

As I said, many of those who belong to the Islamist current and others fear the religion’s emancipation from the state to be left as a societal matter. Why does the state train Imams? Why does it control mosques?

The issue of the state’s neutrality involves a great deal of risk and adventure. If what is meant by the separation between religion and state is that the state is a human product and religion a divine revelation as the distinction was made clear in the context of the early Muslims between the realm of revelation (wahy) and what was the realm of the political, then it is ok. But if what is mean is the separation in the French sense or in accordance with the Marxist experience then we may engage in a dangerous adventure that may harm both religion and state. The total stripping of the state from religion would turn the state into a mafia, and the world economic system into an exercise in plundering, and politics into deception and hypocrisy. And this is exactly what happened in the Western experience, despite there being some positive aspects. International politics became the preserve of a few financial brokers owning the biggest share of capital and by extension the media, through which they ultimately control politicians.

In this context, people are deeply in need of religion and its spiritual and moral guidance which would enable them to distinguish between right and wrong (halal and haram). And in the absence of a Church that monopolises the definition of what is halal and haram, this task is left to be debated by the elite of thinkers, the people and the media.

Should religion be entirely emancipated from the state and politics, this would also carry some risks whereby things would get out of control and social harmony would be endangered. The way to do it, therefore, is to find a balance that would guarantee people’s freedom and rights, because religion is here to do exactly that. To achieve this balance, we need to go back to the issue of distinguishing between religion and politics and adjust the parameters of what is constant in religion and that which is variable. We need our legislators to be well acquainted, educated and versed in religious values, so that when they are legislating they do not require the tutelage of religious scholars and authorities, and the same goes for politicians. There is no value to any religious observance that is motivated through coercion. It is of no use to turn those who are disobedient to God into hypocrites through the state’s coercive tools. People are created free and while it is possible to have control over their external aspects, it is impossible to do so over their inner selves and convictions.

This is exactly why we saw two models in dealing with issue of the headscarf/veil, the first is a veil that is dictated and imposed by the state and the second is a veil forbidden by it. Once I was in a Muslim country’s (in reference to Saudi Arabia?) airport where all women were covered, but as soon as the plane took off the veils flew away with it. This is a clear failure of that country’s educational system, which was unable to guarantee people’s religiosity except through coercive tools. In Ben Ali’s Tunisia, women were forbidden from wearing the veil and express themselves in whatever appearance they saw fit, also through the state’s coercive means. This was also a failure.

The primary orbit for religion is not the state’s apparatuses, but rather personal/individual convictions. The state’s duty, however, is to provide services to people before anything else, to create job opportunities, and to provide good health and education not to control people’s hearts and minds. For this reason, I have opposed the coercion of people in all its forms and manifestation and have dealt with such controversial topics such as al-Riddah (apostasy) and have defended the freedom of people to either adhere to or defect from a religious creed, based on the Qur’anic verse that says: ‘there is no compulsion in religion’.

There is no meaning in forcing people to become Muslims, the Muslim nation has in no need for hypocrites who manifest belief and conceal disbelief. Freedom is the primary value through which a person adheres to Islam, so he who announces his shahadatayn (‘I declare that there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his final Messenger’) does so on the basis of free choice underpinned by awareness and conviction. In this manner, the state is Islamic insofar that it assures its actions are in accordance with Islam’s values without being subjected to the tutelage of any religious institution for there is no such a thing in Islam. Rather there is a people and a nation who are the decision makers through their institutions.

When the Meccan people objected to Muhammad’s religion, he asked them not to interfere with his preaching activities and to allow him the freedom to communicate his message to the people. Had the Meccans accorded the Prophet (pbuh) the freedom of expression, he would not have immigrated and left his homeland. But because his message was so powerful, they could not offer an alternative to counteract it. This is why Muslims consider Islam’s proof to be so powerful that there is no need to coerce people, and when the voice of Islam proclaims ‘Produce your proof if ye are truthful’ this challenge is being proposed at the heart of the political and intellectual conflict.

Thus, the greater part of the debate taking place nowadays in our country is a misunderstanding of such concept as secularism and Islam. We demonstrated that secularism is not an atheist philosophy but merely a set of procedural arrangements designed to safeguard the freedom of belief and thought as Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri distinguished, in his writings, between partial and total secularisms. An example of the latter would be the Jacobin model in French history. In their war on priesthood, the Jacobins’ raised the following slogan: « strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest. » This is a French specificity and not the absolute definition of secularism. There is also an ambiguity regarding Islam, for there are those who believe that Islam can only be victorious by confiscating people’s freedom and imposing prayers, fasting, and the veil through force. This would be far from being a success, for Allah Almighty had considered hypocrisy to be the greatest crime, and the hellfire to be the eternal abode of Hypocrites.

The fact that our revolution has succeeded in toppling a dictator, we ought to accept the principle of citizenship, and that this country does not belong to one party or another but rather to all of its citizens regardless of their religion, sex, or any other consideration. Islam has bestowed on them the right to be citizens enjoying equal rights, and to believe in whatever they desire within the framework of mutual respect, and observance of the law which is legislated for by their representatives in parliament.

This is my understanding of things, and my view with regards to Islam’s relation to secularism. I hope that I have touched on the main issues, and I thank you profusely for your attention.

Transcribed and translated by: Brahim Rouabah/CSID

British Masochists for Sadistic Domination?

 [Inspired by Wikipedia]

BMSD is an buerotic preference and a form of sexual political expression involving the consensual use of white structures of power, intense secular stimulation, and fantasy power games. The compound BMSD is derived from the terms: british, a national formation in decline; Muslim, the subjectivity targetted for attack; secular, the vice of godlesness in polity; and democracy, a form of political charade whereby the people are duped. BMSD performs a limited range of activities, supplicates to secular authority and reproduces forms of indistinct blandness.

The Quilliam Language Police

For some reason these sock puppets for secular liberal hegemonic imperialism send me their saddo press releases. A few weeks ago they let off a plea for funds. Today I get some random notice of a report that simply causes laughter. Perhaps its a the dying throw of a fish suffocating in the air, maybe its conceptual cost cutting who knows?

Basically they are telling people not to use the following terms lest they cause extremism. Its like Orwellian newspeak and thoughtcrime.

• ‘The Islamic/Muslim World’
• ‘Muslim countries’
• ‘The Muslim Community’
• ‘Islamic Law’
• ‘Islamophobia’

Reading between the lines, this is saying,

• You have no place in the world.
• You have no nationhood.
• Not even lower scales of organisation and collectivity.
• Or body of live legal theory and practice.
• Or cause for complaint.

Its quite an ambitious ideological stun grenade.
 
Oh dear, I think I just got radicalised, quite holistically.
 
In the meantime we await the laughter inducing antics of Dr M and Mister Moo.

Tower Hamlets Mayoral Election Result

Crybabies who squeal 'Islamofascism' to curry favour with allies who mean no good should not be allowed to prosper. You, Native Informant, yes you, you should win a prize. Look at the monster you have fed in the white is right backlash. Accept your loss, move on.

Alleged election game irregularities aside. We need to ensure that stupid schisms in Bangladesh politics do not penetrate our generation of political culture. We have great political traditions, but not of recent generations, lets skip it please. The Secularist-Islamist polarity is a useless one which doesnt need to exist, it empowers the imaginationless and the cynical exploiters of the spoils system that is Bangladeshi Moronarchy. It is redundant for us, yet continues to reproduce itself in us in a small borough of Tower Hamlets, and by extension the Glorious Sylhatians of Britain. I am glad that this incursion seems to have lost the latest electoral negotiation.

In desh, they (political and intellectual classes) havent really gotten very far in developing beyond year jiro jionijom, military nationalism and a motheaten limited islamism 1.0. Its developmentia I think, and our failings.

We've gotten really good at nose counting forms of political mobilisation since the early 2000s, but this needs to be re(de)fined. Rudeboyness fused with conservosocialism is eclectic, but not beautiful.

Book Banning Festival in Bangladesh

We are dealing with the Defence and Promotion of deen, life, progeny, dignity, intellect and property. Not human rights incorporated, freedom of speech wont feed my children, just brings heart disease and bootleg clothing.

The Matter at hand
The late founder of Jamat e Islami and writer Syed Abu Ala Maududi's publications are coming in for a new kind of attack from the Government of Bangladesh these days. It has banned his books from libraries, officially 'for Islam' and 'against extremism'. Actually it was for a couple of other strategic and tactical reasons: political vendetta, geopolitical sock puppetry and ideological opposition.

It is a ridicuous proposition. Blaming Maududi for any particular category of violent criminality in Bangladesh is like blaming Peter Gabriel for the technocratic commodification of multiple musical traditions for the white (sorry) ear that is 'World Music'. As the late awesome sociologist of the resurging world Syed Husain Alatas might have put it, 'somewhere along the line, a fool had left the imprint of their brain.'

I have a few meals of consider upon hearing this news.

1) The wealth, health and beauty of Islamic thought and practice across South Asia, or Dinia, but specifically Bangladesh.

and

2) What on earth these Awami Leaguers and supporters are playing at. The meals are two because the banning group, unfortunately, is not really interested in the first meal. It seems, officially at least, genetically incapable of talking to the first meal.

Googling around I found several kinds of responses online. They represent the circuits of people who use internet technologies rather than anything particularly intelligent and penetrative. The press in Bangladesh is under pretty strong government disciplining on these matters, but lets wait a couple of days before writing it of as completely in the pocket. This Dawn editorial is the most sensible response ive heard (yet).

On a rather salafi forum some of the more naive people brought up some of Maududi's pronouncements on Dajjal to shoo him away from their professed claim to authenticity. Is there a word to combine cute and cruel?

A rather poisonous brownsaheb blog claimed this a historic first for any government and ranted politically and selectively to promote the general ethos of the move, whilst qualifying ever so slightly that the move was wrong according to orthodox secular liberal doctrines.

A pakistani military wannabe forum of testosterony south asian willy-wavers hosted a much wider range of views, pretty loopy but interestingly covering quite a lot of bases.

Deshi blogs are unsympathetic to Maududi. Their access to him, Political Islam and Jamat-e-Islami through history is through the discursive traditions of war crimes, Bangladeshi foundationalism, student warfare and near historical construction/editing of curricula, culture and creativity.

Its all 'exciting' to listen to, perhaps even pornographic, but doesnt really address meal 1,which i recomend non-secularist deshi ummahtantrics focus on. Indeed the real blandness of the second meal points to meal 1

Enough with the firefighting.

The french lower self lowers itself, liberal sercularist counterparts in the UK applaud the chance to hate on niqabis

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qk11

'I am not defending the ban, but I agree with the sentiments behind it. ' was the general vibe.

Very strange, never realised how dogmatic, emotional and irrational these self proclaimed defenders of 'Enlightenment Incorporated' could be.

Salutations to Bobby Sayyid for having a go!

Dokhol time in Bangladesh

Having projected itself as a secular-cum-liberal-cum-subservient-cum-nominally-lefty political party to the powers of the West for a number of year and as the bulwark against 'Islamic fundamentalism' in Bangladesh, the Awami League now has unbridled state power and is reproducing itself with it in every way that it can imagine. Airports, bridges, public bodies, lynch mobs, campus mobs and illegal occupations (dokhol) of property that would make a Zionist blush. It is brutish, thuggish and will respect/tolerate no opposition.

This force can dominate Bangladesh because,

• the competition is inadequate.
• the public are gullible.
• democratic practice has brought the worst out in the people.
  
• the national mythology is locked into a perpetually degrading loop.
• it takes a national re genesis event to stamp a new political imprint on the country.
• many of the people who should be imagining better and beyond the secular boundary are otherwise occupied, dead or buried.

Dr Zakir Naik: Preacher of hate? You're having a laugh?

So the 'preachers of hate' weapon is now being used on Dr Zakir Naik. He has been banned from visiting the UK and giving lectures.

Theresa May is very badly advised/stupid/plain evil. I', not sure which just yet.

Dying to appear 'tough on terror', they want to be seen to be doing something. So following a well known recipe: add some decontextual 'quotes' together to demonstrate that the man isnt a secular liberal, scream with righteous indignation, stir with power and disrupt a large set of comunity events this summer. Events people have made efforts to put together.

We need to fight back on these things, so that this is not a costless injustice at the very least. I am glad that the good doctor is legally challenging the 'decision'. He is lucky, many others dont have the resources to contest such calculated insults.

Slurring Muslims is everyday business. Immobilising their thought and disrupting their organsiation are policies in evidence.

The 'preachers of hate' weapon is not because of the reasons given by the state, but because Zakir Naik has power. The ability to be listened to and respected by hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the uk.

Al Muhajirun Spinoff vs British Muslims for Secular Democracy Deathmatch this saturday

Deep inside the sellout ghetto.

"Yaar, what shall we do yaar? that unwashed anjem choudhury and droogs are trying to bring the Sharia to Britain by textspeak, look..."

cum 2 hour demo islam4u: Shariah in the UK of A. send ths txt to all your brothers and sisters in islam
please please pretty please x x x x x

"Whats new yaar? save for the appeal to the 12 year old stupid girl sector?"

"I'll tell you whats new, now that the BNP got chastised by the british middleocracy, its up to us, as spokespeople for the Mourgoisie, to reciprocate to increase our visibility"

"Yes i was looking to acquire some new stationary the other day, So what shall we do? I wanted to go shopping that day"

"I don't know yaar, but you know what I do whenever I dont know what to do?"

"Ah yes, imagine like we imagine a white person imagines"

"Easy, theres a website for this"

2 hourse later.

"So that was how you came up with our Acronym?"

"Yes yaar, would you like a beer?"

"So how comes all the white liberals i talk to laugh us off as if we are some sex toy vendor?"

PHONE RINGS

"So the quilliam chaps are on the line, some sleazy sounding fella. They'd want in on this, actually I bet they'll actually end up with the credit, press coverage because we are such fat losers boohoohoo."

10 hours later

"Wait a second MajEd, I hear you but fail to see how all this soas medieval BS is really going to play with middle england, I mean its ok for you, we actually have to make sense. No you cant use that in your thesis."

"Another long one ey?"

PHONE RINGS

"Its Peter Tatchell"

Of course there is no link between atheism and secularism!

Some events put a grin on my face that takes a while do subside. In a country where there are a lot of people abusing the Muslim ethic of avoiding questioning someones iman, creating the impression that 'anything goes' in terms of organisational activity we have the launch of a platform for those who have abandoned their religion, and furthermore of it being promoted by the Secular Society. Tactically one could not make this up!

Secularism itself strikes me as a faith, (set of rather bitter beliefs) in of itself but without the devotional gorgeousness of religions, their rootedness, the spirituality, the history, the community and the transformative quality. Allah guide them to something better!

"NSS(National Secular Society) supports the launch of the Ex-Muslim Council of Britain

The Ex-Muslim Council of Britain was launched this week on a wave of good wishes and congratulations at an inspiring event at the House of Commons in Westminster.
Maryam Namazie, the NSS’s Secularist of the Year for 2005, is the voice of the London chapter of an organisation that is making waves throughout Europe. Following on from Mina Ahadi’s high-profile launch of the German Council of Ex-Muslims, other groups have sprung up all over Europe. It is clear that there is a need for an organisation that encourages people from a Muslim background who are uncomfortable being defined by a religion they may have abandoned.....

We hope that thousands – maybe even millions - of other Muslims around the world will hear the message of Maryam, Mina, Mahin and all the others who have been brave enough to be the first to say: I will not be defined by my religion, I will not be put into a box that limits my humanity and renders me powerless.".

Yahya Birt as usual has something interesting to say. (the only good muslim is an exmuslim)


Then there is The South Asian Fudge, where 'Secularism does not mean the absence of religion' or 'Religion should have nothing to do with politics' from the class of people who have been taught or discovered very little about Islam.

This stance might get you votes amongst the ritual followers and those oppressed by the allegedly religious forces but nevertheless wont get you very far past your own immediate interest and your real enemy's fishing net. It has been rendered into the common sense quite artificially in places like Bangladesh, through repetition, national ritual and demonisation of other arrangements. Thankfully i think the trend is decaying in desh.

The expectation is that as soon as people start wising up to the implications of secularism on religious life, policy, science and education the multi directional social equilibrium will shift in favour of faithfulness, trust and values. That is so long as rationality is increased in the system. Lustful lack of self control, consumerism, racialism and untempered individualism are some of the inhibiting factors.

Id like to set up a unit for the study of secularisms and atheisms. focusing on the relationships and experiences of conversion to in a range of regional, national, community and individual circumstances. This, for the beleiver at least is as big a research priority as figuring out the links between foolish religios sounding policies and violent crime.

Why?

Religion is the first maqasid (objective) of the sharia. and order matters. then comes life, intellect, dignity and property.