Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
when it shaded its light round him Allah takes away their light and
leaves them in darkness, where they cannot see”(Qur'an 2:17)
Like fire, religions have two aspects of Light and heat. The Light
(Noor) relates to knowledge (ilm) and the Heat to sentiments (jazb)
RISE
(Rigorous Intellectual Spiritual Efforts)
What survives the withdrawal of light of Intellectual Tradition of Islam from the life of
a majority of Muslims facing the devastating tidal wave of materialistic and secular
concepts is a vague and lukewarm religiosity (in the affluent circles) and unintelligible
devotional sentiments in the masses. This half-hearted and distorted interest in the
practice of religion fails to provide the intellectual principle to discriminate: right from
wrong, good from bad, sacred from profane, higher from lower, vertical from horizontal,
spiritual from psychic, intellectual from merely rational and traditional from modern.
Popular western and secular ideals like ‘progress’ and ‘development’ and counter-
traditional ideologies like ‘evolutionism’ and ‘democracy’ are now accepted as credible
Islamic ideals/ideology and supported by a large number of contemporary Islamic
political, social and literary thinkers. some Muslim scholars and religious leaders are,
sincerely but ignorantly, promoting such irreligious ideas. The powers that the Muslims
communities seek, even the most devoted, are either economical or entirely political in
nature.
Vague humanistic moral and ethical values essentially founded on philosophies of the
secular west like freedom(again political/economical in nature) that have only distant and
superficial resemblance with the norms of orthodox Islamic tradition are willingly
accepted by the educated Muslim elites. Such uncritical assimilation of hybridized moral
frameworks have not only caused enormous confusion of identity but has also become a
motivating force for further westernization of Islamic societies especially in the literate
classes.
Those religious leaders, who are not initiated into Intellectual Tradition of Islam,
cannot do better then presenting the sentimental and ethical teachings at the exoteric
level, which may precipitate blind devotion encouraging the unnecessary sectarian
patriotism, promoting religious violence and extremism now so prevalent at the social
and collective and even global levels.