A Note on Understanding Islam: Liberalism’s Origins & the Superimposition of a Specific European Experience
Having travelled to the America’s, Middle East and Europe, lecturing and debating on issues related to Islam, philosophy and politics, I have found a common trend when people try to understand Islam and its political authority. This common trend is the imposition of European history, intellectual development and religious experiences on the Islamic narrative. As a result of finding myself trying to deconstruct this common approach many times, I feel it is only wise to write some notes on how Liberal or European minds should seek to understand Islam and its political structures. One way of doing this is by explaining the specific political history of Europe, the origins of its predominant ideology and the different experiences in Islamic history.
Liberalism is purely a European product. Liberalism’s political values are the outcome of specific social and historical conditions, subjected to a specific type of analysis. Therefore it must be asked, is Liberalism an ‘absolute’ alternative to other ideologies, or is it historically and geographically bound?
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The Greek gods, and how the non-believers still refer to them
Muhammed Salih al-Munajjed wrote a book about how the Olympic games are haraam because of their pagan origins and associations with ancient Greek mythology. Similarly, ‘Nike’ was the Greek goddess of victory, so some scholars equated wearing clothes with ‘Nike’ written on it with wearing a t-shirt saying ‘Hubal’ or ‘Vishnu’. Now Muslims are more concerned to package-up Afghan women and send them to the Olympics to beg for acceptance from the West, a much more important issue.
The ‘West’ has absorbed the Graeco-Roman identity as part of its culture, but this is an artificial idea. Actually the Greek and Roman civilizations were based in the south and the east of the Mediterranean, not in northern and western Europe. The centres of Roman and Greek culture were mainly in what are now or what were Muslim lands, such as the Mediterranean islands, north Africa, Egypt, Turkey, and Greater Syria. In fact, the Berbers, Copts and Syrians had much more to do with the Greeks and Romans than Europeans, certainly the Germanic peoples, including the English.
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