Enlightened Moderation: Desi Version of Enligtenment!
Most of us believe that everyone needs to modernize in order to cope up with the dynamics of this world. We feel that its ok to change ourselves with changing times as long as we don’t compromise on our religious principles and so Mush came up with the concept of Enlightened Moderation. A huge number of Pakistanis except religious fanatics welcomed this notion since it seemed to lead to a neutral path…“deen aur duniya saath saath” I also supported it up until I began to formally study what “Enligtenment” is. Enlightenment in its real sense is an effort to humanize religion. Mr. M. J. Inwoods explains the leading doctrines of Enlightenment as shared by most of the spokesmen in the Oxford Companion (1995,236) and one of those doctrines goes on as ‘ Beliefs are accepted only on the basis of reason, not on the authority of priests, sacred texts or tradition. Thus Enlightenment thinkers tended to atheism, or at most to a purely natural deism, shorn of supernatural and miraculous elements and designed primarily to support an enlightened moral code and in some cases to account for the faith that the universe is a rational system wholly accessible to human reason.” This very clearly shows that Enlightenment leads to the replacement of religion by reason and rationality.
In order to modernize Pakistan, Mush also wanted to have this sort of "Enligtenment" but since it was too difficult to openly reject the supremacy of religion so he came up with a desi version of it giving it the name of "Enlightened Moderation". It is just a softer image of the original concept so we shouldn’t fall in the trap because initially this desi version may seem to be tolerant towards Islam but would ultimately lead to the rejection of it. In fact, even now we can see the repercussions all around in the form of the amendments being made to the curriculum and the demolition of Mosques in Islamabad which are just a few examples.
pretty good….ur right…few days ago a guy i know asked me whether i ever played holi,
surprised i asked why since he wasnt hindu..he replied that its fun…pretty amazed i told
him that its a religious festival and although we must respect other religious festival but we dont have 2
participate in it!!!…..needless to say he argues a lot…i think sooner or later we will be
celebrating christmas, dewali and sabbath and will forget all about eid
Comment by lubz — February 27, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
and u forgot to mention “Valentine’s Day”…this year people were all going crazy…never saw so much excitement abt it b4…this simply shows that “Enlightenment” is coming
Comment by Fariha — February 28, 2007 @ 12:02 am
Awesome stuff Fariha! Very well written. I would sure share it with my blog readers. I am glad that you soon realized the real motive behind this “Agenda”
I think you forgot to mention about new version of “SUFIism” by Musharraf that is “Dance,sing and Get mast”
Comment by Adnan Siddiqi — March 4, 2007 @ 11:37 am
@Adnan
Hmmm…Sufism..thanks Adnan for making me notice that..i might come up with a post on that as well.
Comment by Administrator — March 6, 2007 @ 12:24 am
“Beliefs are accepted only on the basis of reason, not on the authority of priests, sacred texts or tradition.”
Do you see any problem with this?
Comment by Sohail Abid — May 10, 2008 @ 6:11 am
@Sohail Abid
The quoted statement is incorrect IMHO. It only applies to rational beliefs. But a lot of beliefs, particularly those related to religion are based on faith and faith alone.
And it seems to me that you apparently misquoted from this page: http://www.rationalist.com.au/faqs.htm
Comment by waqas — May 12, 2008 @ 3:44 pm
I quoted it from your blog post. line 10.
Comment by Sohail Abid — May 26, 2008 @ 1:32 am
yeah … it’s all propaganda anyway …. but this so called ‘enlightenment’ has been going on for several years now. All we have to do is look around us and see how things have changed recently. It gets a little sickening sometimes and we just look the other way.
Comment by Arfeen — August 28, 2008 @ 11:47 pm
Well i am just a browser of your post and never gave a comment on any of your wiritings but
this one has compelled me to present the other side.
what was musharraf’s intent by tossing this term of englightened moderation , God knows best
but what I think is that our whole community needs moderation. We as a nation have a strange habit
of making mountain of a molehill and fabricating baseless conspiracy theories whenever some one
tries to identify our faults .
It is strange that though being a Muslim you have a fear of “replacing religon by reason”
I think a muslim should be the last person in the world to avoid reason , in the whole of quran
we are being invited by God to argue and reason , He never asks us to believe Him and
His messenger (pbuh) just for the sake of it.
And at last one saying of Hazrat Ali , that you should ponder over what is being said rather
who is saying , we need to do soul searching of our socieities and whether Mush or Bush says
or not , but adopting moderation we are not following them ,but only our prophet (pbuh)
Comment by Aamir — May 3, 2009 @ 11:15 am
Well i am just a browser of your post and never gave a comment on any of your wiritings but this one has compelled me to present the other side. what was musharraf’s intent by tossing this term of englightened moderation , God knows best but what I think is that our whole community needs moderation. We as a nation have a strange habit of making mountain of a molehill and fabricating baseless conspiracy theories whenever some one tries to identify our faults . It is strange that though being a Muslim you have a fear of “replacing religon by reason” I think a muslim should be the last person in the world to avoid reason , in the whole of quran we are being invited by God to argue and reason , He never asks us to believe Him and His messenger (pbuh) just for the sake of it. And at last one saying of Hazrat Ali , that you should ponder over what is being said rather who is saying , we need to do soul searching of our socieities and whether Mush or Bush says or not , but adopting moderation we are not following them ,but only our prophet (pbuh)
Comment by Aamir — May 3, 2009 @ 11:16 am
Well i am just a browser of your post and never gave a comment on any of your wiritings but this one has compelled me to present the other side. what was musharraf’s intent by tossing this term of englightened moderation , God knows best but what I think is that our whole community needs moderation. We as a nation have a strange habit of making mountain of a molehill and fabricating baseless conspiracy theories whenever some one tries to identify our faults . It is strange that though being a Muslim you have a fear of “replacing religon by reason” I think a muslim should be the last person in the world to avoid reason , in the whole of quran we are being invited by God to argue and reason , He never asks us to believe Him and His messenger (pbuh) just for the sake of it. And at last one saying of Hazrat Ali , that you should ponder over what is being said rather who is saying , we need to do soul searching of our socieities and whether Mush or Bush says or not , but adopting moderation we are not following them ,but only our prophet (pbuh)
Comment by Aamir — May 3, 2009 @ 11:18 am