‘Tolerance solution to society’s problems’
By Anil Datta
14 May, 2012
Tolerance is the key to a harmonious society and each one of us must be prepared to acknowledge the rights of others to have their own views on issues. Today the situation in Pakistan is really fluid and one sees negative trends all over. A major reason for that is that our society today is riddled with intolerance.
These views were expressed by Amin Hashwani, co-chair of the India-Pakistan CEOs Business Forum, at a talk delivered jointly by Hashwani and former Hizb-ut-Tehrir member Majid Nawaz, at the T2F on Sunday evening. Hashwani said that civilisations crashed abruptly because under the surface there were fissiparous developments, intolerance being a major one. “My concern is that we are very complacent,” he said.
He said that another unfavourable trend was the favourite national pastime of taking shelter behind conspiracy theories.
Talking about the “threat perception to Islam”, he said: “We are constantly accusing the non-Muslim world, or the West, of hatching conspiracies against us but what about our ties with Muslim countries like Afghanistan or Iran which leave quite a bit to be desired? For that matter, what about our ties with India, India also having a very large Muslim population?”
He regretted that even after over six decades of nationhood, “we have not been able to evolve a national identity.”
He said, “We Pakistanis are paranoid when it comes to the US, but we are absolutely silent when Muslims kill Muslims on a large scale in Somalia.”
This prompted a miffed questioner to ask, “What about Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama’s killing of almost a thousand innocent Pakistanis by his drone attacks? What about the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in an unprovoked attack on a military base in Salala on November 26 last by US forces? What about the US security contractors like Black Water killing people with impunity in Islamabad and terrorizing the residents of various other localities in Lahore, Peshawar, and Islamabad? Are all these cases of mere paranoia?”
Majid Nawaz, a UK citizen and official of the UK-based Quilliam Foundation, an organisation devoted to combating religious extremism and militancy, narrated his hair-raising experience of interrogation in Egypt in the days when he was an active member of the Hizb-ut-Tehrir.
“We should not be arrogant to assume that we are free of extremism. We who are not extremists have a role to play in preaching tolerance and non-violence,” said a converted Nawaz.
“We all must have total freedom to interpret religion. The moment we close the door to this freedom and impose our particular brand of religion on others, we are closing the door to Ijtehad.”
Islam, he said, was a faith while democracy was a mechanism for settling differences and breeding a harmonious society.
He recounted how his views had changed and said it was because he decided to adopt a prisoner-of-conscience status. His captors began to support him once they were convinced that he was not a terrorist. The talk was followed by a question-and-answer session and participants became so involved that the programme, which started at 6:30 pm, continued till almost 9pm.
Source: thenews.com.pk
URL: https://newageislam.com/ijtihad-rethinking-islam/‘tolerance-solution-society’s-problems’/d/7343