From: onf@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (omar.farooq)
Subject: Islam and Non-Muslims
Organization: AT&T
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 15:28:49 GMT


>-Those people who still beleive that Islam can go along with
>-"secularism" or any other form of state affairs have to go back and dig
>-into the spirits and difinitions of Islam.
>
>	Since secularism simply means that the Government will
>	not discriminate between citizens on the basis of religion,
>	what you say above amounts to " Non-muslims cannot
>	expect equal treatment under an Islamic state". If you
>	did not mean this, you cannot have any objection to
>	secularism.
>
> -The important point to understand is the status of non-muslims in an
>-Islamic state. A fear has been spread out by western media, and some
>-"innocent" muslims, that an islamic state means no freedom to an
>-individual of practicing his own religion. Above all Islamic state means
>-persecution of non-muslims. Let me say that there is no reality in this
>-fear. Because Islam guarantees religious freedom. Islam has definitive
>- approach to the rights of non-muslims. 
>
>	Let me quote from an article I wrote some time back :
>
>	" I have no idea what the law says - but in fact it is 
>	impossible to build Hindu temples in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
>	and several other Muslim countries. During my stay in 
>	Kuwait, all applications by Hindus to build temples were
>	rudely rejected. Not only that, even gatherings
>	in private residences for Puja etc were liable to be 
>	interrupted by high-handed police patrols. I have also
>	heard accounts of how the Saudi customs confiscates religious
>	literature and objects to be used for private worship and
>	throws them in the trash can ! "
>
>	Mr Jaseemuddin, are all these guys in total violation of the Koran ?
>	If so, how come the Islamic clergy does not raise objections
>	to these actions ? In fact, they are actually even more
>	intolerant than the government officials, and are forever urging
>	the officials to be more bigoted than they already are !
>	How come they violate the Koran with impunity ?
>
>-Muhammad Jaseemuddin
>
>	Raghu
-----------------------------------------------------

I don't find it surprising that Saudia Arabia doesn't allow Hindu Ambassadors
or that temples or even private worship is forbidden and supprressed.  The
reason being that those countries only claim to rule by Islamic law, but
still cling to their pre-Islamic traditions of royalty and kinship which itself
is forbidden in Islam.
Islam does give definite rights to Non-Muslims, but unfortunately, at the moment
most Muslim countries are divided between finding the right balance between
traditional religion and Western modernization.   And the feeling of being
uprooted after a colonial past doesn't exactly help them place their
identity.  Consequently, amid the confusion, they have resorted to the
punitive aspect of Islamic jurisprudence as the first resort of dealing with
the ruled subjects, rather than keeping that as a last resort and letting
the religion spread on its own.  Which is how it surfaced as a majjor religion
in the first place.

I guess you can always find reasons to give cause-effect explanations or you
can look back in history and read Ibn-Khaldun and Arnold Toynbee and see how 
they explain the cyclical pattern of history -> Hellenic era/Dark ages, 
Inquisition/Rennaissance; Or pre-Islamic chaos in Middle East/Islamic spread and
age of relative tolerance and growth/Post industrial chaos in Middle East.

Whatever!!


My tea is getting cold!


Omar
omar.farooq@att.com

Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan