Together with a number of prominent activists, journalists and academics, Farooq Maudoodi has been trying to propagate what he feels was and is the original message of the JI and its founder, his father. Farish A Noor spoke to him at his residence in Ichara, Lahore about the present orientation of the JI, the role of the Ulama in politics and the future of the Muslim world. An unjust world may witness even greater injustices in the coming decades if seven current global trends persist. The news that the Taliban Government of Afghanistan has started vandalising the rare statues of Buddha in Bamian region of Afghanistan is highly disturbing. It is vandalism of the worst sort being perpetrated in the name of Islam.
Many Chinese people believe that a person is rich or poor because of their fate.
Others may think that people are poor because they are lazy. According to a public opinion poll a few months ago, most of the respondents said that one should depend on oneself to survive and that it is immoral to depend on the government. The United Nations Summit in New York in September was the second major gathering of government leaders marking the millennium. The first was the South Summit in Havana in April. When the Oslo Document was originally presented by the Israeli government to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations in the Fall of 1992, it was rejected by the Delegation because it obviously constituted a bantustan.