Subscribe:
RSS feed
Browsing All Posts published on »June, 2010«
Contestations of Ijtihad: The Need For Debate
by A.A Khalid In liberal circles of religious scholarship there is a contention that ‘’ijtihad’’ is the epistemic tool which will solve all our grapples and puzzles of establishing a suitable religiosity for our time. Ijtihad is elevated from its formal place as a mere tool of legal reasoning restricted in the classical tradition to […]
The Demand for a State Religion Constitutes Blasphemy
by Nasir Ahmad The concept of State Religion is inherently flawed. Enforcement is essential for state whereas freedom is integral to religion. State has got a separate intitution for the enforcement of Law and the Constitution. If we make religion an integral part of the constitution, the institution for the enforcement of Law and the […]
Religious Basis of the Enlightenment?
by A.A Khalid The calls of liberals and progressives in Pakistan in constructing a model of epistemology suitable for a modern nation state predicated on the notion of a reduced religiosity and a public conscience which adopts a minimalist understanding of religion is false. Historically it is false and from a positivistic point of view […]
How Reluctance to Debate Religion Has Resulted in a Total Quagmire
by Raza Habib Raja First published at the Pak Tea House I have often been much more amazed not at the religious fanaticism of the few, but at passivity of the moderate majority. And although skeptics will cast their doubt but the fact is that Pakistan on the whole has a moderate population, particularly when […]
The Two Nation Theory
by Yasser Latif Hamdani Daily Times, Monday, June 07, 2010 For Jinnah and the Muslim League, the Two Nation Theory was not an ideological position etched in stone. It was the restatement of the arguments needed to ensure national status for Muslims in a multinational independent India One of our most persistent national myths — […]
Religious Liberalism – Our Greatest Hope?
by A.A Khalid Is religious liberalism an oxymoron, or is it something long established? More to the point is there something known as Islamic Liberalism, or Liberal Islam? Surprisingly, there is indeed something, a discourse known as Liberal Islam. And contrary to popular perception it is not a contradiction in terms. Charles Kurzman a Professor […]
What Clash of Civilizations?
Why religious identity isn’t destiny. By Amartya Sen Slate March 29, 2006 That some barbed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed could generate turmoil in so many countries tells us some rather important things about the contemporary world. Among other issues, it points up the intense sensitivity of many Muslims about representation and derision of the […]
Pity the nation
By Hajrah Mumtaz Dawn, Monday, 07 Jun, 2010 The ironies we witness every day in Pakistan would have us shaking our heads were it not for the fact that they usually provoke such deep visceral dread. Take the furore over the recent shutdown of Facebook and other websites. In Pakistan the debate framed the issue […]
Message from the Mosque
The question regarding the root causes of religious extremism, fundamentalism and Talibanization holds a central position in our contemporary discourse. Is religious extremism, a product of abject poverty and impoverishment? Or is it an outcome of modernity? Is it the struggle of rural poor against the exploitative socio-economic structures? Or it is mainly the disenchantment […]
Challenging ourselves
By Aasim Sajjad Akhtar The News, Sunday, May 6, 2010 150 years ago the French thinker Alexis deTocqueville wrote about the perils of majoritarian democracy. His reference point was white America, a society without a past to burden it, a land riven by ambition and the cult of the individual. DeTocqueville emphasised the inherent tension […]
A history of prejudice
By I.A. Rehman The News, Sunday, May 6, 2010 Tracing the roots of how the level of tolerance for the belief of the ‘other’ sharply declined When the Second Amendment to the constitution was adopted in 1974, the government claimed honour and glory for having settled an 80-year-old problem. Each year since then has made […]
The Blasphemy Around Us
by Ayaz Amir The News, Friday, June 04, 2010 If Islam stands for anything, it is for a just society, free from want and oppression. There is, thus, in Islam no blasphemy greater than a child dying of hunger, a child begging for bread, a woman drowning herself and her children, as has frequently happened […]
Share
Recent Comments
روشنی
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Secular Pakistan 
June 28, 2010 by Awais
1