Why Every Spring Within The Islamic World Will Have To Go Through A Long Autumn
By Iqbal Latif
Thu Mar 10, 2016
Being reposted for posterity: In response to “Hints of an Afghan Spring” By Dr. Maha Hosain Aziz on August 24, 2012 - Business Week
Revolutions and change do not appear in a vacuum. Every spring within the Islamic world will have to go through a long autumn that may last a few long seasons. There is no possibility of 'freedom of mind from crutches of ideology' without 'Dechristianisation.' Is the Islamic world ready for enlightenment like 'Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution and Civil Constitution of the Clergy'?
The French Revolution brought about a massive shifting of powers from the Roman Catholic Church to the state. Is the Arab world ready to take the powers of the Mullah away? If this happens, spring in the Iranian/Arab/Islamic world will become an institution. “French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from liberal political groups and the masses on the streets. Old ideas about hierarchy and tradition succumbed to new Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights.”
The separation of mosque from governance as the cornerstone strategy is a 'nuisance' for Taliban, the predominant power in any future Afghanistan. Dogma needs to be buried once and for all. Apparently there is no end to demagogues who follow demented, dogmatic and archaic governance as 'carte du jour' to heavens. Works and ideas of philosophers and several Enlightenment figures influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions. The 'academic origins' of the French revolution were John Locke, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet. Revolutions are inspired by the prophets of 'Enlightenment.' Until Islamic enlightened philosophers are brought ahead of the sacred scriptural writings, no 'revolt' is possible. Revolution is freedom of mind from dogma, you cannot have 'dogma and freedom' together - a melange that is impracticable to accomplish.
World affairs and global problems of scarcity are secular issues. In crescent of Islam and Afghanistan particularly, a great proportion of populace are more worried about the afterlife than this life. When heavens are to be cared more than this earthly abode you end up making this 'dwelling' of ours hell. That is what Afghanistan has regrettably become with Taliban in ascendancy. Every voice of reason and rationale is nipped in the bud.
Reform and revolution bring a change of direction and thinking does not multiply ignorance, debauchery, depravity and transgression. Revolution of 'Protestantism' owes its birth to corrupt Papal practices. Indulgence credits of the old days are like the carbon credits of today: In the Dark Ages, when Papacy held control of men's consciences and few dared to think, one method which she practiced to supply herself with money was the sale of indulgences. The indulgence was a permission to sin and yet be free from its consequences. It is recorded that Pope John XII granted "ninety thousand years of pardons for deadly sins" for the devout repetition of three prayers written in a chapel in Rome. It was the sale of these future indulgences for money which awakened and aroused a few such honest souls as Luther and gave rise to the Reformation movement, called Protestant, because of their protests and objections to this and other evils recognized in Papacy. There is no sign of any such movement that may decry and help eliminate extreme strains of outmoded and backward-looking intransigent practices.
The slide of Af-Pak region cannot be arrested by half measures of 'lesser dose of religion,' rather, an eradication campaign aimed at resurgence of democratic and free mind. This is akin to the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen! Karzai cannot deliver this; he does not have the credentials. And any change led by Lilliputian bird-brained reactionaries like Taliban that perpetrate continuity of 'doctrine and faith' will just weaken the structure and result in further anarchy.
Religious fervour of any state will lead to more complications. Man’s affair with God is his private matter; the states that sponsor the 'link' with man and God through enterprise of state ensures discrimination of attitudes to those who fail to ascribe to the version of the mullahcracy or clergy. Until papal bulls ran the affairs of Europe, no renaissance was plausible. It was only after the papacy was bundled to Rome that renaissance appeared. The ability of man to think freely helped Newton in Cambridge to write 'Principia Mathematica' (The Principia states Newton's laws of motion, forming the foundation of classical mechanics, also Newton's law of universal gravitation, and a derivation of Kepler's laws of planetary motion which Kepler first obtained empirically. The Principia is "justly regarded as one of the most important works in the history of science”).
Once calculus (in formulating his physical theories, Newton developed and used mathematical methods now included in the field of calculus. But the language of calculus as we know it was largely absent from the Principia; Newton gave many of his proofs in a geometric form of infinitesimal calculus, based on limits of ratios of vanishing small geometric quantities) was properly defined. We were able to design internal combustion engines, the harnessing of forces of nature in a designed environment through our intelligence, produced the productivity boost that helped human population and productivity, that was stagnated since the last two millennia, to jump exponentially. (Human population was 210m in around 100 AD and until 1000 AD increased to 270m; from 1000 AD to 1800 AD the population increased to 900 m but after that in 200 years we are 7 billion and much better off).
Revolutions are inspired by these prophets of 'Enlightenment.' Until Iranian/Arab/Af-Pak produces enlightened philosophers and they are brought ahead of the holy writings no 'change' is possible. Revolutions only succeed when a society is able to embrace new realities. If society chooses to live in space of decadence and old thought, any revolution will only be a tool to accelerate its descent to ignominy and disasters. Iranian Islamic Revolution is one great example of that permanent decline where 5000-year old cradle of civilisation lost its significance and primary important status of intellectual greatness to some ruffians and radical louts.
People ask why we question instituted truth. Legitimacy of so-called 'established truth' is the cause of intellectual self-indulgence and degeneracy of ideas. What is fossilisation of mind? It is the worst ailment that affects most of us, but we rarely go to any specialist to seek help. Our clergy and soothsayers become our authority to seek remedies from malady of thoughts; they straitjacket us into thousands of years-old hold of incoherent fables and ask us to follow those for eternal nirvana; we create our own divisions of man based on antiquated ideas from scriptures, though it is just a matter of time we all as humans shall be one.
It is stagnation of mind that destroys balance of humanity. It is the established wisdom that needs to be questioned; any thought that abhors free enquiry based on rationalism and reason does not deserve to survive. Hierarchy of deceit that is imposed by the orthodoxy of established clergy is first to be challenged on all occasions. When someone talks about progress of a society I will ask them where their philosophers, thinkers and writers are; why are they not questioning; where is enquiry sitting on the list of their priorities. If one doesn't openly question the root of ills of our society, he becomes part of the ill. Anyone who is liked by everyone has to question this universal likeness. Once someone showed me how universally he is liked and I saw a coward right in front of me; idol smashers are not conformists but iconoclasts.
Today we need to talk about precise, surgical operations that are needed to cleanse this rampant puritanical streak of self- righteousness. It is not Islamophobia to question cause and effects of delay in the emergence of renaissance and actions to overhaul antediluvian thinking processes; it is only through volte-face and restructuring that we will be able to eradicate from the organic body of 'political Islam' tentacles of its enormous fanatic infrastructure. We need our unwavering resolve to question and condemn the ills of lunatics and fringe killers who have taken upon themselves to make this earth heaven by making it hell for everyone.
Source: iqballatif.newsvine.com
URL: https://newageislam.com/ijtihad-rethinking-islam/every-spring-islamic-world-go/d/106607
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