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Canada's a centre for Islamic reform
We Muslims view all aspects of life -- economics,
politics, family and universal realities -- through religious lenses. But we
are living in a world where not many nations are judging everything by
religious standards any more. In this situation, it seems much of the world
expects us to shed our religious beliefs in order to share common human
aspirations and developments. When we don't come up to the required standard of
compatibility, our fellow citizens ask for reforms and reformers within the
Muslim community who can help us to become compatible with rest of society. Muslims have been striving for their own reforms
through the ages. During the ninth and 10th centuries, Mutazalites, known as
followers of rationality in Islam, encouraged reasoning and questioning within
the theological orbits. In modern times, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
founder of modern Turkey, brought a modern secular structure to Muslim Turkey
in the 1920s. One may disagree with some of Ataturk's actions, but good leaders
are remembered for their overall reforming abilities, despite their blunders.
Ataturk's name surely stands for that. More recently, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a liberal
Sudanese reformer and a voice of liberated Islam, was executed in a Khartoum
prison in 1985 for committing apostasy. Today, in a time when Islamic reforms are needed,
we don't find any notable momentum across Muslim nations. But in Canada, interestingly, we can find some
streaks of Islamic reform. Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble With Islam
Today, claims to be on the front line of Muslim reform through her two
ventures, Project Ijtihad and the Moral Courage Project. Ijtihad is a widely used term in talking about
reforming Islam. It means an intellectual effort by Muslim jurists to reach
independent religio-legal decisions. The Muslim Canadian Congress is another strong
voice to challenging Islamists in Canada and around the globe. This network of
progressive Muslims, along with Homa Arjomand's International Campaign against
Sharia Court in Canada, was the real resistance on the ground to the potential
imposition of Islamic sharia law in Ontario. Asra Nomani, a well-known U.S. Muslim author, was
an organizer of unprecedented Islamic prayer led by a woman, Amina Wadud, in
the United States in 2005. Later on, the Muslim Canadian Congress organized
woman-led prayer by Toronto Islamic scholar Raheel Raza. But these few
happenings haven't led to regular prayers led by women. There is another dilemma for Islamic reform, in
which, as in any movement, you can find divisions. Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian
Congress, at one point said Irshad Manji's book, The Trouble With Islam Today,
was not addressed to Muslims but, he wrote, "aimed at making Muslim-haters
feel secure in their thinking." Today, Fatah says he regrets that. "Looking back to the time I slammed Irshad
Manji's book, I now realize I was unfair to her. There were many redeeming
points in her memoir, which I overlooked in my rush to judge it. "For example, she was right in identifying
systemic racism in the Muslim world as one of the cancers impeding a Muslim
renaissance. I was wrong in overlooking that fact. Having said that, her
allegation that I am anti-Jewish was amusing, considering the fact that some
Islamist bloggers charge me with being a Zionist." Sonia Ahmed, the founder of Miss Pakistan Canada
Beauty Pageant, is shaking Islamists by holding beauty contests and sending
beauty queens to all world beauty pageants. I am trying to initiate a movement of reformed
Islam called the New Islam Movement, which aims to set up modern Islamic
centres where gender segregation could be denounced and where modern arts and
open debates could be carried on. My fellows and I strongly feel that
reformation of Islam can be launched better "on the ground" than
through lectures and Internet blogs. In short, Canada seems the future base for
reformation of Islam. Tahir Aslam Gora is a Pakistani-Canadian writer
living in Burlington. goratahir@yahoo.ca
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