Viewpoint: Islam and modernity

I was asked for this viewpoint from the BBC News Website.

“Modernise or die” screamed an email we received a few months back at our offices.

Though brutally put, the charge is not uncommon. Just as victims of rape are sometimes accused of “asking for it”, Muslims – the targets of amongst other things hate crime and legislative paranoia in the West, and despotism and dictatorship in the East – are deemed to warrant their plight because of their religious identity.

Islam and its practice have become synonymous with self-imposed backwardness which needs modernity – aka Western philosophical and political progress to make its adherents acceptable members of society.

 The manufactured consent of Western democracies is not a great model for the West let alone elsewhere

What could be wrong with that?

The overwhelming majority of refugees worldwide according to the UN are Muslim.

Equal numbers are impoverished or imprisoned by cruel regimes. The case for modernity seems irresistible. Yet, there are problems aplenty.

Scepticism of the modern

By asking whether Muslims should accept modernity, we simply assume that the average bearded or veiled adherents on the streets of our global village don’t want to be governed in ways that reflect their wishes…

Read the rest of the piece on the BBC News website.