On Apr 19, 10:00 pm, Nawaz <nawaz_chilliz...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Hi Folks
>
> It is necessary that we Muslims face up to the reality that the Islam
> that we profess, practise and preach today is not working. And has not
> worked for a long time. This is true both for our communal life as
> societies, and our personal lives as individuals. In Muslim countries
> and communities around the world there is no shortage of mosques and
> preachers; prayer and fasting are common, millions perform the Hajj
> every year. Yet most of these societies are rife with corruption and
> injustice; poverty and illiteracy prevail; sickness and malnutrition
> are common. It is not just a question of resources; those Muslim
> countries that are lucky enough to have oil or other natural resources
> may have avoided some of these problems but face other serious ones
> (which are also common throughout the Muslim world)
Dear Nawaz,
Might I suggest that the biggest problem facing much of the Islamic
world is that democratic society is something that developed
elsewhere. A democratic society is not merely the process of voting
for a leader but a complex system of checks and balances that ensures
against vote-fraud, the overconcentration of power in a particular
branch of government and a whole body of knowledge known as political
science, of which I am aonly moderately versed in.
I recently read a book called "Dreams and Shadows" by Robin Wright
where she chronicled the struggle for social progress in quite a few
(though by no means all) of the mostly-Islamic societies. What Wright
made clear was that democracy was an element originally foreign to
Islam (although not intirnsically so) that many (if not all) Islamic
societies were only slowly adapting to.
I mention this because democratic society quite possibly might be the
hallmark of a developed nation. There are places like China that are
testing other possibilities, but so far elected representatives, human
riughts, a free market economy, and so forth, appear to be the
hallmarks of a developed nation.
It may well be that Islam will produce other contributions to global
development in the future. I have already mentioned that it may be
dangerous for places like Europe and the United States to endlessly
secularize themselves (maybe Islam could help with this. But really
the hallmark of an advanced society in the 21st century is a
democratic society. And apparently these can only be produced
gradually.
Regards,
Matt
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