Secularism is removing any religious rituals, beliefs and practices from the community’s way of life. It is a topic that has manifested thorough history in an objective and a subjective sense. In the objective sense, there has been the exclusion of religious ceremonies, institutions and offices from the life of the public. On the basis of subjective manifestation, there has been the disappearance of religious imagery, feelings and thoughts from the way people understand earthly things. On the basis of objective manifestation, many nations are highly secularized as even the Islamic states are ruled by the elites who have abandoned such ceremonies, institutions and offices in favor of the western style. Islam being a religion has responded to secularism with some saying that the issue of secularism should be removed from the public domain. Others have also responded in favor of secularism saying that secularism allows Muslims to perform their religious obligations and not abide by the state enforced laws to observe sharia.
Hasan al-Banna in his book, The New Renaissance: Islam in Transition highlight some of the reasons why Islam is the perfect religion. Hassan argues that Islam has perfect, moral, honorable and noble principles and rules. The principles and rules, he says, are more beautiful, more complete, purer, more accomplished, infinite and more glorious than anything that social reformers and theorists have ever discovered. Many Muslims, he argues, had this truth hidden from them, but when God revealed to their thinkers the truth, they recognized that there lay a wide gap between what they had had experienced for long and the immense value that their religion carried. In comparison to the current world, el-Banna notes that the social principles that the Western world is built have failed completely. In spite of the many things that the west offers, Western life has failed to give her people even the smallest path to the tranquility and rest that they so much run after. The knowledge, mechanical products, invention, discovery among other ‘Western’ things are not capable of providing even a grain of faith, a ray of hope, or a flicker of light to what exactly life is. The rush for material possession in the western world has made westerners treat each other much more unequally within their class distinctions in their struggle to claim some property.
According to SayyidQutb, the Islamic religion is a religion that grew in an independent state that owed no allegiance to any king or empire. Humankind has never again achieved such a kind of society again. Islam regulated and ordered this society and hence adopted from the beginning its spirit and principles as well as its methods of life and work. Islam then joined the rest of the world and faith by its laws and exhortations. For this reason, Islam joined Heaven and the earth in a spiritual organization that recognized the difference between religious coercions and worldly zeal. The unity that Islam established between the earth and heaven has never been infringed even with the customs and outward changes. Qutb argues that Islam id the only religion that is essentially a union, one of the characteristics that define Islam. Islam, he says, is at once exhortation, religious law, work and worship. There is, therefore, no basis of delinking the society from Islam either by the course of Islam history, the nature of Islam itself. Islam does not overlook in any was the welfare and needs of the society nor does it fail to acknowledge individual achievements in life in every nation. What Islam does not agree with is the fact that there seems to be a tendency of the society preying upon the abilities and gifts of individuals that achieve big things in life, which is in itself sin. By so doing, the community not only sins against the individual but also against the ensemble wellspring of community.
Islam acknowledges the whole principle of equality among all human beings. It acknowledges that people should not be favored or denied favor on the basis of skin color or gender. Children and wealth are gifts from God and should be used to glorify God. That said, wealth and children are just, but ornaments of this temporary life but acts of righteousness are better in the eyes of the Lord. Righteous acts are better for hope and reward in God’s eyes. Islam does not in any way demand that there has to be a literal equality in terms of wealth among people. Distribution of wealth, Qutb explains, are based on individual endowment with gifts, which is not always uniform. Therefore, equality among men should be on the basis that all people are provided with same opportunities to do the same things and achieve equal results. There is a need for competence among individual to ensure that the issue of inequality is eliminated. Islam forbids unbridled luxury in desires and possessions since they result in social fragmentation and classes.
Another thinker, Mawdudi, in his book Political Theory of Islam, argues that the Islamic stated is the all-embracing and universal. The sphere of activities in an Islamic state is coextensive with the entire human life. The state is after developing and molding all the aspects of life in a way that the aspects agree with the program of social reform and the Islamic moral norms. Looking at it from this point, the Islamic state closely resembles a Communist of Fascist states. A closer examination, however, reveals that an Islamic state is vastly different from modern-day authoritarian and totalitarian states. There is not a trace of dictatorship neither is there any form of liberty suppression. An Islamic state is also ideological. From the Surah and the Quran, it is clear that Islam is based on an ideology and its aim is to establish the ideology. The government from this perspective is an instrument of implementation of these ideologies. An Islamic state for this reason has to be led by a person who understands and believes in the ideology. All people who truly believe and are part of this ideology can play any role in an Islamic state. In an Islamic state, the sovereign ruler is God and only God. Those persons chosen to force the law of God on earth are not severing themselves. These people are the vicegerents of God, the Supreme Leader and are not allowed to exercise powers other than those delegated to them.
Islamic states are without a doubt all-embracing and comprise all there spheres of life. However, the universality and all-inclusiveness of Islam are based on one law, the Devine Law of God. All leaders are supposed to follow and enforce this action on earth in its entirety. Secularist claims that Islam discriminates on others is true because there is only one law, the Devine Law of God and false because Islamic states are all-embracing.
References
al-Banna, H. (n.d.). The New Renaissance . Islam in Transition , 59-63.
Mawdudi. (2007). Political Theory in Islam,” eds. John Donohue and John Esposito. Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives , 262-270.
Qutb, S. (n.d.). Social Justice in Islam. Islam in Transition , 103-108.
