ماذا نعرف عن اليهود كأمة واليهودية كديانة؟
كيف تتعرض مناهجنا المدرسية للموضوع؟
Generous Ayya, agreeing to transform her comment to a post, further explains about Secularism
By the way , do you know what Ayya means?
This is what ayya said
I have to disagree with others who said that it’s impossible to apply secularism in our system. It is not an easy venture; yet, being impossible is not quite accurate. First of all; people make countries and not vise versa, it was our grandmothers who burned their abayas and liberated women from ignorance, and the educated mass of women today are the result of that first trigger. Who would have thought that they could dare to do such thing in their time? And it was us who gave the hardliners a green light to control our lives, simply by giving them a deaf ear. What we are in today is the result of the state of macari we’ve been engulfing ourselves in since more than a decade, while hardliners used that to gradually apply their dogmas. But there is light; I can see it. I have noticed lately that people are changing when we are talking about public opinions; some previous hardliners are leaning more toward mediocre tendencies, liberals are more open with their opinions unlike few years back. Technology and animosity behind the Net is also helping a lot in this respect. The change is not happening drastically though, which is natural, but the mere fact of it happening is a good omen that it will eventually ensue. Unfortunately; there is a big misconception to liberalism and secularism in public conscience, and hardliners constantly keep misinforming the public, to the point that to some, the words “free mind” “open mind” “liberal” “secular” started to bring shame and disgrace. And here is the area where I think liberals should invest more to shed any misinformation by presenting more discussions and debates and clearing points, just like what you’re doing with this post. Secularism is not a personal belief like religion or even atheism, secularism is an outlook or a principle on which one perceives harmony in a multi-ethnic and multi-sect societies. The closest I can find in Quran is “ wa ja3alnakom sho3ooban wa qaba2el lita3arafoo, ina akramakom 3ind allah atqakom”There will be people who would oppose religion and others who would try to enforce their beliefs, but as a general look, this is the beauty of it, that each has his right to present his point of view with complete freedom. Yet, Moslems in general are very emotional, they are used to “ my way or the highway”, and any opposition to religion would raise chaos, just like what happened with Danish cartoons. Not to say that I approve of such cartoons, but I disapprove of the act that followed it by most Moslems. We need to tamper down our sensitivities and be rational in our debate; there will be many incidents in which we may think that others exceeded their limits by offending others, and this should be dealt with civility.
Several important points
What do you think?
