Certain forces ‘using Islamophobia as a tool’

Courtesy: The News, http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=123442

Friday, July 11, 2008 Noor Aftab Islamabad

Speakers on Thursday said that Islamophobia is being used as a tool by certain forces especially in the West to secure personal political gains at the cost of fundamental rights of the Muslims.They expressed these views at a panel discussion on ‘Religion, Culture and Politics: Critical Reflections on the Contemporary World’ organized by the Iqbal International Institute for Research and Dialogue (IRD) of the International Islamic University here.

Justin Podur, lecturer at the University of Texas, said multi-culturalism stressed the need for provision of fundamental rights to all the communities living together in a society.“Community means a set of people who have something in common and identity stands for membership of any such community. But people usually do not have only single identity as they are members of various communities at the same time,” he said. He underlined various factors related to religion and culture including role of choice, universal values, cultural differences and clash of civilizations. Elaborating his point of view he said clash of civilization has nothing to do with any culture and this concept or phenomenon has no authentic reasons acceptable to the common people.Justin said boundaries of groups or communities undergo a series of changes as these are no permanent features and entirely depend on the fast changing situation.

Robert Jensen, lecturer at the York University, Canada, said centrality of love and core values of justice have so much importance when any one talks about religion and culture. He said, “Love in action is harsh and dreadful thing than live in dreams. When it comes to ground reality then certain elements hinder a person from doing such things which he generally thinks to do.” Jensen said every person has a capacity to speak truth but “we observe that most of the people avoid speaking truth in the society that clearly shows that only having capacity to speak truth is not enough, people must have courage to do so.”

Dr Anees Ahmad, a well-known scholar, said culture in Islam can be looked at from different angles but any narrow interpretation of Islam and culture does not serve any purpose.He said teachings of ‘Tauheed’ have significantly contributed towards development of the Islamic culture as a universal phenomenon. “There has to be unity in thought, feelings and behaviour of persons that are considered hallmark of their personalities.” Dr Anees said Islamic culture has a tendency that is dynamic and not static and its basic philosophy is same everywhere in the Muslim countries across the world.“Water is always water because you can pour it in any kind of utensil but its features remain the same and this is the case with Islam,” he said. He said if faith has flexibility and offers solution to increasing problems then we could say that it has the potential to cope with the growing needs of modern day era.