Re: Khawarijees: The biggest threat to Pakistan and Islam
My viewpoint on secularism is very clear and i have stated it many times on this forum .... i believe in state secularism. A secular state is a concept of secularism, whereby a state or country purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion...I believe when religion becomes the primary source of a country's laws and religious authorities have civil power, members of minority communities end up being seen and treated as second class citizens.
If the will of the people is to have religous law, then it seems like tyrany of the minority that a secular regime would be imposed on them. The flaw with the above is that it presumes the religions being mediated with have no legal tradition. There is a world of difference in being neutral to a religion and being hostile to it by activley contradicting it, and overriding it.
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Now lets get to the second point....there are no gazillion models of state secularism that you are trying to implying...that is why i gave you an example of Canada and USA...a
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Simply wrong. First, no one claimed a gazillion models of secularism, but a plurality. Second, the expierence of secularism in the Muslim world was nothing like that of Canada or the USA. Or Europe for that matter. Ignoring that is foolish...pretending that there is only one modality of scularism is even more so. There are plenty of secular models where the state imposes and enforces.
Second, your ideals aside, any notion that people who disagree with you need to be sidelined and oficially removed from the polical discours is hardly accomodating, and smacks of the same takfiri/kemalist attitude. Yes, I think they're one in the same. Either one is on board with an ideology, or one is the "enemy". Go on about how fair secularism is, but the fact is, in a majority Muslim society that wants a degree of recognition of religious law encorporated into the political and legal framework, the suggestion that secularism is somehow about accomdoation and fairness seems laughable. Again, this ignores the fact that this particular religion already has a legal tradition that is active and practiced in various ways.
The problem with secularism is that it is absolutist in it's seperation from religion and state. Islam blends the two in amorphous and undefined ways. That naturally puts secularism, in a Muslim context, on the harsher side. Unless it is willing to accomdate Islamic customs, practices and norms (read: laws). But then, that's hardly secular now is it?
The bottom line is, with secularism, there is no accomodation with ANY religio-political movements. With takfiri movements, there is no accomdation with ANY OTHER religio-political movements. The implication here is that non-Takfiri movements are willing to work together, and so the old canard of "which Islam to follow" hardly applies. Second, it hardly gives secularism a leg up over the Takfiris as the dynamic with other movements is more or less the same, idoelogically. Third, if one is committed to democratic evolution rather than revolution, I will be the first to admit that I don't expect a western style secular movement to engage in violence or violent supression. The point of kemalism is,however, that i*t has happened before *to the approval of Western secular democracies. So many people much smarter than you and I that are comitted to Western secularism and democracy have already made the determination that when it comes to their pet ideology...you know...sometimes yah just gotta kill some people. No need in speaking in terms of hypotheticals. Throw in leftists and the likes, then violence is likely. So, the question of what and whose secularism is quite relevant. So finally, the question goes unanswered. What does secularism bring to the Pakistnai ntable? At best, another zero-sum ideology and another faction. In it's worst form, something that Pakistan is already plagued with.
