The following short item on Muslim social style comes to us from Tariq Ramadan, a recognized contemporary Muslim scholar, but one also under the suspicion of some. Well, I will let you figure that one out. In the meantime I believe this short article is educational for both Christians and Muslims and gives a more positive face to Islam.
Established
Order
The time has come to reconcile ourselves with
the depth and breadth of the Islamic civilizational tradition and its wealth of
meaning that establishes rules in the light of the objectives of dignity,
freedom, justice and peace.
The Muslim peoples of today urgently need to
reassert themselves. Crucial to the process are spirituality and mysticism: not
those of a certain form of Sufism that, not wishing to “take part in politics,”
ends up playing the game of powers (and colonisers), but of the quest for self
that an authentic Sufism never separated from human, social and political (by
way of wise and just government) considerations. It is not enough to affirm
that freedom must come before the “Sharia”; what is lacking is a thoroughgoing
reflection on freedom in the modern age, and the superior objectives (maqasid)
of the Path (ash-Sharia) that supersede its reduction to a body of regulations
presented as God’s intangible laws.
What ash-Shatibi provided us with, in his
synthesis of the “objectives of the Sharia" - which is actually a “philosophy
of law" - must be thought for the notion of freedom: we need a
“philosophy of liberty” that cannot be constricting, reactive or dogmatic but
must be broad, holistic and liberating, valid for women and men alike.
There is a sore need of young scholars (ulama)
of both sexes, of intellectuals who will show a modicum of courage. While
respectful of the message and the immutable rules of practice, they must
imperatively seek reconciliation with the intellectual audacity of those who
have given the age-old Islamic tradition its strength. Against the institutions
that have often shaped them, that are under state control and intellectually
enfeebled (such as al-Azhar or Umm al-Qura today), the young Muslim generations
must free themselves, make their presence felt and give new meaning to the
dynamics of a civil society that is no longer a passive onlooker, or simply
complain, and display their indignation, or explore new ways of acting, new and
alternative visions. Yet they must remain faithful to themselves, while resisting
the established order.
"Beyond Islamism" - Tariq Ramadan
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