Secularism is the fad today, and to call for any religious affiliations within a political organization is completely outdated. We, the young generation, associate religious political movements with tyranny, dictatorships, and loss of human rights. We think religion, whether it be revealed or not, should know its place, and stay in the places of worship. We won't let religion walk through the doors of parliaments, presidential offices, and judge's courts.
It seems that most other religions have accepted this. The Church doesn't mess with what countries do, neither do Rabbis, or Buddhist and Hindu monks. Not usually anyways. Except Muslim scholars, the so-called 'Mullahs', who still believe that Islam has a place with in the operation of the governments of modern countries. For a lot of us who believe in secularism it is rather incredible how the Mullahs are so hotheaded regarding this, and simply won't be content with their mosques.
To be fair, the fear of Mullahs can be said to be for good reason. The image portrayed by the media of Islam is scary enough. For many people of the world, the 9/11 terrorist attacks are synonyms of Islam. And truth be told, the attempts of Muslims to recover their image after the 9/11 attacks remain a gesture - too little, too late.
Worse, every one knows that there are certain countries where Muslims try to implement Islam without having sufficient knowledge of Islamic law, resulting in blundering failures that are in the end nothing more than tyrannies. After all, little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.
Even worse still, the rise of certain groups of Muslims who believe that the only way to save the Muslim Ummah from the unbelievable lowly state it's in is by waging war against the whole world at large has done the Mullahs, and even Muslims in general, no favor. The result has been a confusion between terrorist groups and Muslim political organizations who want to work through the democratic system and Muslim freedom fighters who took up arms only after having made failed attempts at diplomacy.
Having said all this, what makes Mullahs so adamant in their belief that they don't have to do what the Church and the Rabbis did?
I bet you've heard this enough times already, but Islam is a complete way of life. Sure enough, other religions are also a complete way of life in a sense. I say 'In a sense,' because they focus more on formulating a set moral guidelines, where as Islam has come with a more sophisticated legal framework. It is an uncontested fact that the Islamic state established by the Prophet (PBUH) and later ruled by his rightly guided Caliphs (may Allah be pleased with them) was the first nation in recorded history to have developed such a sophisticated legal system, all of which was based on religious teachings. Muslim scholars have elaborated on matters of constitutional, civil, personal, criminal laws, as well matters related to international relations.
Now, what makes these laws, that were formulated more than a century and a half ago suitable to the modern age that we're living in?
The most important factor that makes Islamic Shariah suitable for the modern age is the fact that it accepts custom, public interest, and in certain matters even individual benefit, as sources of law, or matters taken into consideration in the formulating of the law. Of course, customs and the interest of the public, differ from place to place, and from time to time. Individual benefits differ from person to person. Thus, Islamic law is more flexible than we initially might imagine it to be.
Of course, it must be kept in mind that these sources of law come secondary to the Qur'an and Sunnah. We, as Muslims, believe that the Qur'an is a divine revelation from Allah to the Messenger (PBUH) as a guidance for the whole mankind. The Qur'an is therefore the primary source of Islamic law followed by the traditions of the Prophet (PBUH). And these two primary sources provide the guidelines that we must abide by in following the secondary sources of law. As a matter of fact, there's a whole science around the methods of deriving laws from the texts of both the Qur'an and Sunnah as well as from the secondary sources of Islamic law.
All this aside, there's another simple reason why the Mullahs and the Mullahs' followers like myself believe we simply cannot be content with our Mosques. Because the Qur'an and Sunnah has a complete set of rules, to simply be stuck in our mosques would be to work in accordance to around 25% of what has been revealed. We as Muslims have been ordered to live our whole lives in accordance to 100% of what has been revealed.
To follow Islam is to follow Islam in our every day. To pray in the mosque. To go out to the street and be able to relate to the problems we face there. To have the ability to guide the society. To have the guts to be able to lead the society. That's why the Mullahs won't be content with their mosques, damn it!
