Reply to Religious Liberalism - Our Greatest Hope?

A.A. Khalid argues that

1. There is a long-existing Liberal Islam.
2. There is no discourse of Liberal Islam in Pakistan.
3. Pakistani liberals could have connected with this tradition of Liberal Islam. They haven't.
4. The idea of removing religion from Pakistani politics is purely theoretical and unpractical. However, in the pursuit of this idea, Pakistani liberals have ceded the interpretation of Islam to the fundamentalists.

Hence liberals and secularists should stop asking the question if there is too much or too little religion. The question which should be asked is what type of religiosity do we need in order for Pakistan to flourish? What type of religiosity supports democratic governance, human rights, pluralism and tolerance? How can such a religiosity be constructed? The liberals and progressives need to bring to the table a genuine political theology of liberality which can find its legitimacy not only in civic reason but in religious reason in terms of establishing a link with the Quranic text.

Current puzzle

Click in the image to see my current state of confusion.

On a statement of Jinnah

A commenter at the TeaHouse brings up this

3: “.….I am NOT fighting for Muslims, believe me, when I demand Pakistan…..” (Jinnah, Press Conference, 14 November 1946)

See below - what Jinnah was saying is that the creation of Pakistan is necessary condition for independence from the British, and therefore by fighting for Pakistan he is fighting not only for Muslim independence but also Hindu independence.

"I am not fighting for Muslims, believe me, when I demand Pakistan. Pakistan and Hindustan alone will mean freedom to both Hindus and Muslims."

Whether this buttresses Jinnah's secular credentials is in the eye of the beholder.

Mosques and Temples

On CHUP, Kalsoom writes in support of the planned mosque at 9/11's Ground Zero.

In his spare time, perhaps he can write in support of Hindus being able to repair their existing temples in Pakistan?

Budget making

Raza Rumi decries the lack of public in the very public policy represented by the Budget.  Even the availability of the budget documents is a problem.

For that matter, even though India's 2010-11 budget documents are available online,  I wonder how many individuals, public interest groups or news organizations have looked at them closely?

A necessary, but not sufficient condition, and a hypothesis.

The Pew Research Center had a public opinion poll in 2009 in Pakistan.

Q62b Do you favor or oppose the following: b. the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion?

Favor 78%, oppose 13%, DKK/Refused 9%

Why does the Pakistani public support so overwhelmingly the death penalty for people who leave Islam?

A necessary condition for forced conversions to be a viable strategy for spreading the faith is a severe penalty for reversion.  Of course, penalty for leaving the faith could be high for other reasons as well, so we cannot infer from the fact of this penalty that forced conversions occurred.

Nevetheless we can pose a hypothesis: the geographical areas with the most forced conversions would have had stiff penalties (like the death penalty) for leaving the Muslim religion; and it has since ossified into tradition even though it is not very applicable today.   Areas where conversion took place voluntarily will not insist on these type of penalties so overwhelmingly, they were less necessary.

Of course, the reason that I bring this whole topic is that as we speak, forced conversions are going on in rural Sindh in Pakistan.

Bad Aid

The chai-ghar put up this article an hour ago, and then removed it.

Bad aid
PATTA SCOTT-VILLIERS   24th May 2010  —  Issue 171 
The {British} government’s promise to up foreign aid risks pumping more cash into a broken system