How ISIS Drives Muslims From Islam, what can we do?

Muslim majority nations have had Sharia laws to govern throughout their history, and that is the only system they are familiar with. They simply cannot imagine governance without it and will continue to resist it.

We the people, both Muslims and non-Muslims alike have a responsibility to understand this, we cannot force our ways onto others overnight, we cannot even talk about stripping Sharia Laws they are used to however wrong they may be. We have to find a way for transition without violent overthrow of the existing systems that would bring more chaos than they have now. Iraq is the best example.  Insha Allah, time permitting, I will write a full paper on it if I decide to go full time service.

I have challenged the Pew Survey for their thoughtless methodology of asking people if they want Sharia Laws, the results were an eye opener. Nations like Indonesia, Albania, Kazakhstan and others showed less than 10% of the population wanting it, whereas Egypt, Pakistan and other nations were going over 75%. The difference is crystal clear for a genuine analyst – Where people are familiar with other laws, they opted for that, and where they knew nothing about other laws, they stuck with the only thing they knew; Sharia.http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-worlds-muslims-beliefs-about-sharia.html

Hold your prejudice, Sharia is not the problem, it was designed to serve justice, the intent was good. However, flaws have crept into the system, directly going against the Quran’s wisdom, instead of justice; injustice is meted out to women in case of rape and adultery, divorce, apostasy, blasphemy and other ills.  You don’t throw your computer away because of malfunctioning; you isolate the problem and fix it. The same applies to Sharia. I have put together a precise paper on the topic. http://sharialaws.blogspot.com/2014/01/fixing-sharia-laws.html

The Western world has seen governance by the people for the people in the last 250 years after ravaging conflicts among different denominations. Muslims have lived under the thumb of colonialism, and when the colonists start giving up in the last 100 years, they left this to the damned monarchs, tyrants and dictators.  Muslims never had the freedom to self-govern with the exception of a few nations including Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan to an extent. If not the dictators, they had authoritative figures popped up like Banna, Maududi and their ilk who made themselves to be God like figures beyond questioning.

A majority of Muslims understand freedom; they live in democracies like Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Turkey and some of the central Asian Nations and to a greater extent Pakistan and Bangladesh constitute over 2/3rds of Muslims. We can hope for and count on them to fight for sanity and freedom to prevail.

However 40% of Muslims live in dictatorships – nearly 45 out of 57 Muslim majority nations are not democracies. Thanks to the internet, they can see what freedom is and hope they will see how to manage. Egypt failed and resorted to authoritarianism again. Tunisia is a shining example of that struggle.

My suggestion; Let people have the freedom to choose. Instead of goddamned “telling” others, let’s learn to “suggest” and show them the benefits of democracy.  Disgusted with dictatorial religious nuts and monarchs, more and more people are choosing to walk away from Islam, I have no problem with that, Quran’s wisdom and the prophet believed in free will, there is no compulsion, let you be who you are, and I am who I am, and let’s figure out how to live and function together with least problems

As a pluralist Muslim committed to cohesive societies, I believe no human has to live in fear of the other, which is the inherent purpose of all religions. If it is their choice to leave Islam, they should exercise their free will with no consequence, but if it’s driven by disgust against Islam by misunderstanding it, then we have to find means to clarify that. Islam is not the problem and don’t blame the bad governance and dictatorial religious leadership on Islam. Knowledge leads to understanding and understanding to acceptance of the uniqueness of each one of us.

Mike Ghouse, a Muslim speaker, activist and thinker committed to a cohesive world and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day.

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