By: Anna Su

Anna Su — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:21:11 +0000

I totally agree with this post, but I would just like to offer my take on certain points raised. First, Professor an-Na’im’s book focuses on the need for a secular state for Muslim religiosity to flourish. That is true, but I don’t see why an Islamic state—or to be particular, the modern incarnation of it, i.e. a state which explicitly names Shari’a as the or as a source of law—cannot also deliver the same conditions which can allow Muslims to flourish in terms of their spirituality, provided that basic freedoms are respected. That would hinge mainly on how Islam is interpreted in that particular state. Indeed, the bottom line is that Islam is what Muslims make it out to be.

Second, that “no religion can survive if approached strictly or primarily as a set of ‘laws’ that are external to the human interpreter” is true, but it is also true that what is indicated externally in state laws and policies can be deemed merely as reflections of moral and spiritual preferences of the polity. Having an Islamic state, then, cannot be considered as something anachronistic.

Comments on: A secular state must deliver

By: Anna Su