This is the first episode in a series that would be an attempt to understand the concept of the "Islamic State" ... Your comments will sure help be build more arguments :)
When one talks about an Islamic state, people – especially in the west – tend to waffle! A religious rule! Wasn’t that the reason why world was in the dark ages? Wasn’t that why scientists were getting killed? & wasn’t that why people kicked religion out of their personal lives? … Well, I think Yes, but please know this:
Go through any English dictionary and type the word "religion", most results you will find that religion is referring to rituals and spirituality .. Which is true for Christianity.
However, he nearest word in Arabic to "religion" is "Deen" or "دين" which is not only rituals, spirituality, and prayers. Mohamed M. Yakoot tried to extract the meaning of Deen from Quran and Sunnah and the results were interesting.
In his article "Conceptualizing Deen .. Where to?" Yakoot concludes that Deen is a complex set of meanings. Deen mean creed; manners, prayers, and rituals; rule, judiciary, and government; means source and Shari'ah; obedience, love, and subordination to Allah; judgment and rewarding in the hereafter; Deen means to take up a promise with Allah to reach subordination and achieve succession.
So, saying that Islam is a "religion" would be unjust; in other words, equating Islam to Christianity would not be the best way to understand the former.
Once i was asked about the Palestine, how much was was the cause representing in my life; my answer was simple, yet important enough to turn my attention to a big fact. I said, Al-Aqsa is a holy Islamic site, we pray daily 5 times .. thus, we are in direct contact with our religion - or Deen in this case - which includes the sacred places every day.
Muslims do not practice religion, they live it. Islam would be a way of life rather than a priest a person would visit to cancel off his sins every week.
Thus, to rephrase, voices that are calling to "separate religion from state," i would perfectly agree with; and Deen is inseparable from state.
I'll leave you here for now...
To be Continued...
1 comment:
Egypt's National Democratic Part, the NDP, sometimes uses religion-related slogans and arguments in elections' campaigns. This happened in some constituencies in the 2005 Parliamentary elections. I assume they know how the Egyptian people get touched and influenced by anything that had to do with religion; so they used religion to infulence voters.
Do you realize the relationship some secularists make between this example and the importance of secularism? What do you think? How do you comment on that?
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