Thanks to Ahsan for his
painstaking efforts to dig out the real meaning of the word’ secular”. When
I was in the 7th or 8th grade I read a book by Cahill Gibran, a Lebanese Maronite Christian who died in1926. He wrote, a truly religious man does not embrace any religion”.
This saying had a life long impression in my life which opened the flood
gates of freedom in my life. I understand that a secular person is not a
prisoner of any one institutionalized religion. This is true but after
taking to many devout Muslims and clerics I clearly fathomed that a Muslim
can never be a secular person. Islam does approve secularism. There are a
few conditions which one has to believe without any question otherwise one
claim him/her a Muslim. This is very simple, you love it or you leave it.
In true sense this applies to any institutionalized faith but Islam does
not make compromise and others do.
This taste of freedom from the bondages of any faith
makes life generous. There is an eternal conflict between faith and facts.
In Islam dogmatist and half educated mullahs makes thing worse by declaring
secular person a murtaad and such a person is
liable to be killed as per sharia. Many
apologists are there to show restraint but that they do it under duress of
law. The world is getting smaller and the spirit of secularism is making
progress. Many people are getting the message that for a unified humanity
compassion and understanding is more important than any religion. It may
look like hypocrisy but the king of
An epoch is fast approaching when a synthesis will
emerge and we will bask in an unprecedented aura of freedom not controlled
by any religion but by the larger sense of generosity and compassion.
Akbar Hussain