Omar Faleh has made aninteresting comment regarding the previous post, and I felt the need to explainmy view about Islam as a faith and as a social and political system.

First of all my definition ofIslam is the following: Islam is a religion that is concerned about the faithof individuals, and a system concerned about setting a set of urban rules thatcontrol the society and the state’s politics. So unlike Buddhism, Hinduism andChristianity, Islam is not only concerned about faith and the spiritual life ofits believers and followers. That’s why the Islamic state was born along withthe birth of the faith, and this is how the term “The Islamic State” emerged.The best way to define this term is the following; the Islamic State is a statethat gathers Islam believers where the only thing in common between thecitizens is the faith, so other faith followers -mainly represented- inChristians, Jews and Pagans were considered foreigners or to be more specificoutsiders. That’s what I believe is the main reason behind the rigidity ofIslamic radicalism concerning reviving the Islamic Caliphate. Observing thedifferent Islamic political parties, ranging between radicals to relativelyliberals, all of them mainly agree on one thing which is the rebirth of theIslamic Caliphate, whether it is a normal evolution of the current situation orsomething that has to be forced. However I’d like to point that even thoughthey share the big in bold letters goal, their approach and strategy to reachthis goal are very different, and to show this difference take for example theway Al-Qaeda has attacked the Brotherhood party when the latest participated inthe Egyptian elections, even though the Brotherhood party is considered prettyradical. However nowadays the short term goal of the majority of Islamists isto rule the state using the Islamic laws, which is pretty different from thetraditional “Islamic State”, mainly because citizenship would be based on therace and nationality not religion, therefore other faith followers will havethe right to participate in decision making. Of course this goal is achievable usingdemocracy where apparently the Islamic faith is still very dominant in most ofthe concerned countries.

However the way I see Islam,Islam is a way of thinking and certainly not a set of rigid rules, and that’show I differ from the rest of the Islamists, and let me point that I’m not theonly one who carries such beliefs there is a lot like me out there, but let meelaborate a little bit. What I meant by Islam is a way of thinking, is that everythingin Islam can be changed as long as it’s not the basic values which is called “مقاصد الشريعة”Maquased Al-Shariah in Arabic, which is basically honesty, equality,fairness, peace, unity of god and people, helping the misfortuned, and workingfor eternity at after life by worshiping Allah (of course there might be othersthat aren’t present in my mind now). The ways of worshiping Allah are prettystrict because their description came as a clear as crystal in the Koran andSunna which of course cannot be changed. As a conclusion to this point, it’spretty clear that the majority of the strict rules we inherited from ourancestors for around 1200 years at least, can be changed and that’s what Ithink Allah meant by Islam is a faith valid for every time and place,meaning that Islam could be changed to accommodate the changes in time andplaces, not the other way around.

However I’d like to make it veryclear that I’m not in anyway forcing my beliefs on anyone or stating they’reultimately correct, and I’m open minded to any comment as long as it doesn’tattack my person. Therefore any offending comment will be deleted. So surpriseme…

Mood Music:REM's Losing My Religion. :P

Technorati Tags: Islam, Radicals, Liberals, Caliphate. State, Society, Politics, Religion and Faith.