(This column was published on 02-08-2007. It is being republished today as it is very much relevant.)
What President General Pervez Musharraf may mean by the term ‘enlightened moderation’ can be entirely different from what most thinkers, analysts, ideologues and political activists of liberalism, libertarianism and secularism want it to mean.
These purists of liberal-secular thought don’t mince their words when they say that religion simply has no place in a society or state that wants to embrace modernity, progress and all the liberties associated with democratic living. They aggressively argue that religion is purely a personal matter and should not be allowed to interfere in the affairs of the state that has no business deciding which religious beliefs are more sacred than the others.
The problem with this argument is that Islam doesn’t subscribe to the view that religion is a personal matter. Nor does Islam consider itself divorced from how a society should behave in matters related to morality or from how a state should conduct its responsibilities towards its citizens. Those who consider Islam to be merely a set of beliefs, a collection of rituals and a formula of seeking spiritual solace through practicing these beliefs, and performing these rituals, are sadly ignorant of the fact that Al Quran, the book on which Islam’s whole edifice is built and which is recognized by all true believers as the Word of God, is only partially—infact merely about 5%—devoted to what are regarded as Five pillars of Islam. The rest of Al Quran—nearly 95% is devoted to matters that are related to socio-economic morality as well as nationhood and statehood.
One cannot be taken as a Muslim if one’s belief in Al Quran is not absolute. And if one’s belief in Al Quran is absolute, one is not expected to place the Word of God on sidelines while making the laws of the state, and defining an individual’s relationship with other individuals, the society, the state and God, who according to Islam is the true ultimate Sovereign of the Land.
The purists of traditional secularism cite the example of the West where the States and the Nations progressed only after the Church was banished from Politics.
This principle cannot be applied in Islam’s case, as there is no Church or its equal in Islam, and there is no institution of clerical hierarchy either. Theocracy has simply no place in Islam.
Holding Islam responsible for the backwardness of Muslim countries is also wrong. Muslim countries are underdeveloped and backward because they are still struggling to lay their hands on the fruits of freedom they have won only recently from the yoke of West’s imperial colonialism.
President Pervez Musharraf or for that matter any one who desires to opt for enlightened moderation as the guiding principle of our national way of living, must take into account the fact that a person as modern and enlightened as Mohammad Ali Jinnah had given a solemn pledge to history that no laws in Pakistan would be made that would in any way be in contradiction with Al Quran and Shariah.
Meaning thereby that the Father of the Nation recognized the role of Islam in Pakistan’s statehood.
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