Monday, April 18, 2005

The Pragmatic Muslms of America


Abdul Sattar Ghazali writes:

Attention of the American Muslim community is distracted these days by a non-issue that is, if a woman can lead Friday prayers? This distraction is sparked by the drama of Friday prayer in New York led by a woman who says that she has problem with the Quran. The circus of holding this prayer at a Church amid focus of TV cameras and presence of mainstream media shows the motives and designs of the perpetrators of this stunt and their backers.

It may be recalled that the Progressive Muslim Union of North America (PMUNA) the main backer of Friday prayer circus tried to push the major American Muslim organizations into corner by demanding a position on this non-issue. Just before the stunt, one of PMUNA’s co-founders demanded that the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), KARAMAH, the American Sufi Muslim Association, Women in Islam and Azizah Magazine should take a position on this non-issue.

Returning to the motives and objectives of the so-called progressive or modern Muslims to whom I consider as the pragmatic Muslims because of their utilitarian approach towards Islam. A pragmatist judges the value of ideas, judgments, hypotheses, theories and systems, according to their capacity to satisfy human needs. In other words what is good for material benefit (read market economy) is good for human beings. This is the agenda of the “independent” think tanks and neo-Orientalists. It appears that by default or by design, the pragmatic Muslims are working for them.

Click here to read more

Also read: "Reformation" of Islam through psuedo events

2 comments:

iFaqeer said...

A very robust conversation ensued after I posted an entry on my blog in response to this article (among other things) . Kudos to Ghazali Saahab for documenting it on his website. I have put up the trail at:

http://ifaqeer.blogspot.com/2005/04/conversation-with-american-muslim.html

iF/SIA
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iFaqeer said...
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