Open Journal of Philosophy
2013. Vol.3, No.4, 522-527
Published Online November 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojpp) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2013.34075
Open Access
522
What Is New in Muslim Faith? Global Conflicts versus
Moral Interests
Mahgoub El-Tigani Mahmoud
Department of Sociology, Social Work & Urban Professions, Tennessee State University, Nashville, USA
Email: mmahmoud@Tnstate.edu
Received October 7th, 2013; revised November 7th, 2013; accepted N o vember 14th, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Mahgoub El-Tigani Mahmoud. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
This paper ascertains genuine principles of Islam while exploring an emerging contradiction between au-
thentic tenets of faith in the Muslims’ heritage of human rights and justice, and a variety of modern tar-
gets upheld by OIC Charter and other political and legal instruments to guide a far-sighted authority
agenda in pursuit of global equilibrium over key Muslim concerns. The paper ends with operational
strategies on sooth conflicting situations of this complex dilemma.
Keywords: Islam; Faith; Holy Qur’an; Muhammad; Muslims; OIC; Reform; International Law;
Globalization; Underdevelopment
Introduction
This paper assumes that here are genuine differences, as well
as possible agreements between authentic tenets of Islam and
the international principles on human rights and justice. While
Muslim governments’ developmental efforts emphasize states’
security and military build-up, intellectual works address the
dire need of Muslims to attend key industrial and agricultural
advancement, fair production relations, and radical improve-
ments for the life of the vast majority of Muslim populations all
over the world. Comparisons between Muslim entities and the
non-Muslim western nations reveal unattended challenges of
progression by Muslim states despite immense pressures for
reform by judicial, educational, and other occupational profes-
sionals and activists.
The challenges facing Muslim nations today had been
equally facing non-Muslim individuals and groups. What was
not quite clear for most westerners and other world entities,
however, was that the same challenges of living in peace and
prosperity with the full enjoyment of human rights and funda-
mental freedoms for non-Muslim populations resembled the
same and one requirement for Muslims to exercise full enjoy-
ment of Islam. As we see it, this philosophical issue is precisely
the reason why serious rethinking of East-West, Muslim-non-
Muslim hostilities should be strongly advanced to end the cri-
sis.
Human Rights, Peace and Justice Are the
Tenets of Islam
Islam, a Free Will to Faith
A book of faith in essence, the stories, parables, rules, guid-
ance and commanding teachings of the Qur’an, the Holy Book
of Islam, were revealed unto Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam,
to create a deep level of belief in Allah, the Almighty God.
Allah ordered Muhammad to call upon humans to believe in
Islam, but Allah never required Muhammad, himself the great-
est Muslim, to “control” or to “master” any human to be an
adherent of Islam or the Holy Book of Islam. The Book ex-
plained in several verses that “God guides as He wishes.” God
said to the Prophet in the Holy Qur’an: “Zak-kir!” “Do though
give admonition, for thou art one to admonish. Thou art not one
to manage (men’s) affairs” (Gashiya, verses 91 and 92).
This free choice of a believer’s optional faith in Islam led to
another clear position regarding the progressive mission of
Islam. Precisely, no one person, group, or government on earth
could be authorized, in principle, to force humans to convert to
Islam or to any other religion or faith for “Let there be no
compulsion in religion” (Baqara: 256). Once a human adopted
Islam with full consent, the decision would rightly become a
matter of personal commitment. It followed that the degree of a
human’s adherence to the teachings of Islam would be a matter
of individual consciousness and struggle more than adherence
to any organizational body or external authority. This flexibility
of faith never meant that community-based activity for the ser-
vice of people was not a Muslim’s social obligation (Mahmoud,
2013: p. 329).
A religion for peace, justice, and human rights, Islam is a
motive for ethical and humanitarian commitments. Wrongs or
atrocities committed in the name of Islam should be attributed
to the wrong-doers, individuals, groups, organizations, or gov-
ernments in accordance with their own motivating ideas and/or
deeds. Applying this clear understanding of Islam, the extremist
interpretations and the organizational activities by al-Qaida in
Afghanistan, al-Shabab in Somalia, Muslim Brotherhood Al-
wiya, and many other non-integrationist Jihadist militant
groups, as well as aggressive acts by warring governments,
constituted mutual gross violations of these peaceful fixations,
namely the free choice of faith, prohibition of transgression,
and the cherishment of religious tolerance with respect to both
M. E.-T. MAHMOUD
Muslim and non-Muslim peoples.
Integrationist entities, for example the Arab League and the
Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), preferred to stay at
a distance from the tragedies of violence in the Muslim world,
instead of taking decisive stands to stop excesses of these an-
tagonistic activists against the civilized, sacred, and genuine
realm of Islam. In the meantime, most global powers failed in
the process of negotiating consistently peaceful resolutions to
this international crisis via mutual understanding, brave media-
tion, and tolerant arbitration. Eventually, global powers have
been strongly invited by millions of Muslims to develop au-
thentic knowledge about the faith and jurisprudence of Islam
for the cause of peace, more than escalating the warring meas-
ures thus far implemented against Muslim militants.
Islam, the Holy Qur’an and Muhammad’s Life
A misconception that Islam was a religion affording a special
patronage of some Muslims over the other Muslims or non-
Muslims was firmly rejected by a vast majority of the earlier
Muslims, as well as succeeding generations, as dangerous, non-
religious, and flagrant intimidation of people by a misguided
philosophy or authority-seekers.
Throughout the history of Muslim Sufism, for example, al-
most all Sufi sects were acceptable to a massive majority of
Muslims because they had been founded on the respect of fitra
[the good nature of humanity]. Arguing against misconceptions
of Muslim faith, Nabil Loga Babawi (2002: p. 46), a devout
Christian thinker, ascertained the fact that “Islam is a religion
of peace and friendship between all peoples. Islam is not for
violence and civilization conflicts. It is a religion that recog-
nizes the obligation of all peoples on earth to cooperate with
one another, not to make wars with one another. The Qur’an
says ‘O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male
and female, and made you unto nations and tribes, that ye may
know each other (Hujurat: 13)’.”
The Prophet of Islam paid full respect to the right of humans
to choose the faith they wanted, while still calling on them to
adopt Islam. When the Apostle triumphed over Quraish, he
generously asked them to “Go! You are free!” The patience,
justice, and wisdom of the Prophet articulated in his daily life:
Muhammad presented a living example of the ideals of humane
behavior, even in situations of inflicting the hudud physical
punishments. He taught the Muslims to avoid implementation
of the hudud more than any jurist or thinker possibly did. To
enjoy a healthy productive life in accordance with the Qur’an
and the Sunna, there was a high level of explicit spiritual and
moral commitments, in addition to teachings implied by the
Prophet’s Hadith on al-Jihad al-Akber, that of one’s evil ten-
dencies, the greatest struggle of individual Muslims. A Muslim
was entitled a right to adjudicate; but God would reward him if
he pardoned the offender instead of having him punished by
law.
Muslim Beliefs and Governance
The governments of Muslim societies should confine public
energies and legal authorities to serve the citizens’ constitu-
tional rights without discrimination by race, religion, gender,
political stand, or economic status criteria. Because religious
activities were naturally biased to a religion’s supporters, they
were largely considered community affairs and personal rights,
not a State business. Islam had been revealed as a fitra path of
life [natural right of people to think and act on their own with-
out interference], Muslims were best advised to dispose of their
energies to please God by the service of the needy and the poor,
in addition to the provision of education, health, and other u se-
ful programs, instead of imposing individualistic faith prefer-
ences on people—as previously explained in this paper.
Isma’il al-Faruqi (2009) explained in the area of legislation,
“The Islamic bill of human rights is a system of axiological
principles or clauses… elaborated in the shariah… except in a
few cases, the letter of the prescriptive elaborations of human
rights in Islam is not sacrosanct and hence absolutely inalter-
able. Eternity and absoluteness belong in the main, to the axio-
logical postulates. With the exception of these postulates and
directions, all deontological elaborations… of the shariah are
ever-open to interpretations by humans.” Sayed Radwan’s
(2003: p. 15) eloquent statement further concluded: “the dis-
course of development in the two civilization spaces, Europe
and the Muslim World, was different: The Church was in con-
trol of the religious affair (the image of the World) and the
political affair (the Roman Sacred Empire). The Islamic reli-
gious institution (which was largely different from its Catholic
counterpart) did not control the religious or the political affairs
in the old or in the new ages.”
The imposition of Islam by the so-called Islamization doc-
trine on State or community affairs, especially by government
authorities or the political parties that hide behind them-resem-
bled authoritative political entities and/or state bodies in Mus-
lim societies today. The activities of these groups antagonized
the peaceful principles of Islam as they harassed the populace
by religious intolerance in gross violation of Islam, unlike the
conduct of the Prophet of Islam whose godly mission centered
on the call on humanity to adopt Islam peacefully. The
Prophet’s Sahaba [disciples] struggled as both public figures
and individual Muslims to spread the Prophet’s call in the
known world under difficult conditions of hostilities and self-
defense, including positive responsiveness to support powerless
believers or needy populations. Here, the question is: have the
new formations of Muslim groups adopted the noble teachings
of the Prophet and the same struggles of the honorable Sahaba
to operate the faith of Islam?
The OIC Commitments
The Charter of the Organization of the Islamic Conference
(OIC) as a new Muslim world group, stated that the OIC was
determined “to be guided by the noble Islamic values of unity
and fraternity, and affirming the essentiality of promoting and
consolidating the unity and solidarity among the Member States
in securing their common interests at the international arena”
(International Center for Not-to-Profit Law (ICNL 2008).
Amending the Rabat (1969) and the Jeddah (1972) OIC’s
founding charter, the new 2008 charter was adopted during the
11th OIC Summit in Dakar “in the absence of several promi-
nent leaders… to promote democracy, good governance, and
human rights” (Suparno, 2008); but the ratification of the char-
ter and its operationalization has not decisively changed the
routine performance of the member states.
That most Muslim nations had been led by governments
placing power interests above “the noble Islamic values of
unity and fraternity, and affirming the essentiality of promoting
and consolidating the unity and solidarity among the Member
States in securing their common interests at the international
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M. E.-T. MAHMOUD
arena” was common knowledge: Hamza Hendawi (Cairo, 2013)
reported a clear account “on the Organization of Islamic Coop-
eration Summit: Muslim Leaders Divided on Syria, Mali Crises
Solution” due to unresolvable intra-conflicts between Iran-Gulf
States and Syria-Arab States almost inhibiting normal relations
among Sunni-dominated versus Shiite-controlled Muslim states.
Moreover, mounting tensions between Turkey versus Iraq and
Syria, and/or hostilities between Muslim contending groups in
Somalia , Yemen, Li bya, Algeri a, Tunisia , and Mali jeo pardiz ed
the development of these nations for decades.
The OIC commitment “to adhere our commitment to the
principles of the United Nations Charter, the present Charter
and International Law; to preserve and promote the lofty Is-
lamic values of peace, compassion, tolerance, equality, justice
and human dignity” had been virtually a subject of strategic
interests rather than Islamic essence for Iran and other Member
States which rejected fully the International Criminal Court
decision to bring the Sudanese president Omer al-Bashir before
the ICC, accused of specific war crimes in Darfur. These war
crimes resulted in the extra-judicial killings of 300,000 esti-
mated victims, the displacement of 2.7 million uprooted citi-
zens, and the destruction of property, animal wealth, and land
acquisitions.
This occurred in March, 2009, when the Iranian-led Islamists,
most particularly the Palestinian Hamas, the International Un-
ion of Muslim “Ulama, and the OIC denounced in strong terms
the ICC” (4 March, 2009) decision to arrest Omer al-Bashir for
crimes against humanity in Darfur. Equally importantly, non-
Muslim nations as important as China did not put pressure on
the warring groups to comply with international law by aban-
doning arms shipments to the ruling regime in the first place, as
the Wise Leader of South Africa Nelson Mandela forcefully
decided. In open defiance to their commitments to international
norms, many Muslim States sent parliamentarian delegates to
support the president at Khartoum versus the ICC decision.
These legislators considered the ICC Prosecutor General “a
political employee of Western powers,” and then accused the
ICC of “imperialist conspiracies” and “gross violations of in-
ternational law” because the ICC dared to accuse the indicted
president and must, therefore, rescind the decision, somehow,
or be prepared for caricaturing, political accusations, and other
impulsive reactions. All of the promised threats occurred: fol-
lowing the ICC decision, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament
“Ali Largani, the chief of Hamas political bureau Khalid
Mish’al, and OIC secretary general, besides a number of sev-
eral Islamist experts on international law joined the beleaguered
president and his aides, led by vice president” Ali Osman, to
discredit the ICC decision as “totally irrelevant; and unworthy
of attention” (El-Tigani, 2009).
Other than humanitarian aid primarily provided by the UN,
USA, Canada and European relief agencies with Saudi Aid
(Barasi, 2005), Qatar (Baatout, 2013), and a few other Muslim
donors to the distressed region of Darfur, the OIC obligation to
“ensuring sustainable development, progress and prosperity for
the peoples of Member States; and to enhance and strengthen
the bond of unity and solidarity among the Muslim peoples and
Member States” has been hardly felt by the beleaguered victims
of the war the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated regime (1985 to
the present) waged and further escalated against Darfur and her
people by unprecedented military and financial support from
the Government of Iran and lucrative oil returns. In 2010, the
OIC pledged $850 million to aid Darfur (Baladuf, 2010); and
yet, this amount remained to be seen. Most important, the peo-
ple of Darfur who disdained the authorities’ corruption pre-
ferred security and stability over foreign aid (Baat ou t, 2013).
The OIC claim to promote human rights and fundamental
freedoms, good governance, rule of law, democracy and ac-
countability in Member States in accordance with their consti-
tutional and legal systems was perhaps the most criticized of all
OIC’s obligations by charter. Here, a whole persistent series of
gross human rights’ violations had been increasingly reported
against civil society organizations, political opponents, women
activists, and other vulnerable human rights’ advocates without
adequate response from OIC states (AOHR 2001).
Furthermore, it sufficed to mention the repressive experi-
ences of Taliban in Afghanistan, the political impositions of
dictatorial rule under Islamic banners many times in Pakistan,
Iraq, and Gaza, and the most recent conflict in Egypt versus an
“elected” Muslim Brotherhood demagogic government which
repressive planning and pronounced autocracy versus the
popular will of most Egyptians were only possibly curtailed to
salvage the deeply-rooted civil-minded society in the country
by a joint offensive involving the armed forces and a broad
alliance of people in the 30ieth of June 2013.
Muslims were equally victimized by violent non-Muslim as-
saults. For example, Thomas Fuller (2013) reported that in
Myanmar, “Hatred and mistrust are especially deep between
Muslims and Buddhists in Rakhine State, which borders Bang-
ladesh. Last year, more than 150 people were killed and well
over 100,000 were forced from their homes in the state.” Khin
Maung Win (2013) reported similar atrocities: “Sectarian
clashes that began in June 2012 have since morphed into an
anti-Muslim campaign that has spread to towns and villages
nationwide. So far, hundreds of people have been killed and
more than 140,000 have fled their homes, the vast majority of
them Muslims.”
Notwithstanding these critiques, the OIC pledge “to endeavor
to work for revitalizing Islam’s pioneering role in the world
while ensuring sustainable development, progress and prosper-
ity for the peoples of Member States; and to contribute to in-
ternational peace and security, understanding and dialogue
among civilizations, cultures and religions; and to foster noble
Islamic values concerning moderation, tolerance, respect for
diversity, preservation of Islamic symbols and common heri-
tage and to defend the universality of Islamic religion” were
attainable objectives of which the OIC achieved relative suc-
cess in Inter-Faith conferences, besides similar activities in the
regional and international arenas that supported the East-West
intellectual debates, including intriguing Muslim-Christian
dialogues.
The OIC efforts “to promote cooperation among Member
States to achieve sustained socioeconomic development for
effective integration in the global economy, in conformity with
the principles of partnership and equality” made relatively im-
portant contributions to the national economies of a few Mus-
lim nations, still far behind the overwhelming development
projects, loans and other finances by the West vis-à-vis the
Arab and Islamic inputs that had been founded on similar sys-
tems of borrowing and compounding interest values.
The Underdevelopment of Muslim Populations
Abdikadir Ibrahim (2011) noted that “The Muslim world
faces the challenges of war, poor healthcare, poverty and viola-
tions of human rights, illiteracy, [lacking] of progress, dictator-
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ship, [lacking] of political transparency, ethnic conflict, and
regional divisions. Illiteracy is a problem in majority of Muslim
countries. We know all these problems are interconnected…
Islamophobes blame Islam as the cause of the backwardness of
Muslim nations. But the reality is contrary to that. Islam is a
religion of progress, innovation, and development. It is a relig-
ion of every generation, time, and location. It is a religion of
civilization; it is a way of life.”
Emphasizing the role western colonialism played in Muslim
colonized societies, Ibrahim affirmed: “Corruption, totalitarian
dictatorship and deprivation of basic human rights such as edu-
cation, freedom of speech, free enterprise, political participation,
to name a few became the normal practice of governments…
This leads to low human development index, which is meas-
ured by three indicators—life expectancy at birth, (long and
healthy life), literacy, and income. The majority of Muslim
nations fall in the low middle or bottom of the list in all these
indicators according to the UN report on Human Development
Index.
“In the entire Muslim World (57 Muslim Countries), there
are around 500 universities. On the other hand, there are 5758
universities in the USA alone, and 8407 universities in India. In
a research done by the UNDP in 2004, not one university in the
entire Muslim world was featured in the top 500 ranking uni-
versities of the world. Literacy in the western world, predomi-
nantly Christian, is 90%, whereas the literacy of the Muslim
world is 40%. Furthermore, 98% of these predominantly West-
ern countries completed at least primary education, whereas
only 50% of Muslim countries completed primary education.
Similarly, 40% of western countries attended university,
whereas only 2% of Muslim count r i e s a tt e n d e d university.”
Farooqi (2012) criticized correctly the failures of Muslim
states to boost development: “Muslim nations, in spite of the
poverty of their people are involved in this mad race for mili-
tary might. They have large trained armies, which are estimated
to be 100 million. This is one third of the total world armed
forces… except the recent Iraq and Afghanistan crises but there
have been several bloody wars amongst Muslim nations them-
selves in which millions have lost their lives. Muslim nations
spend 10% - 30% of their GDP towards purchasing sophisti-
cated and deadly arms and ammunitions from the West… sev-
eral factors for the backwardness of the Muslim society… illit-
eracy in general and women illiteracy in particular… 16% of
population is involved in industrial production and high popu-
lation growth.
“Human Development Index prepared by UNDP gives a very
dismal picture of the status of literacy, health and economy of
Muslim nations. In the first 25 best countries listed under HDI
(2002), no Muslim country figured in the list. Barring few
small oil producing Muslim nations, majority of the Islamic
world lies in the middle and low categories of human develop-
ment, a clear indication that the Islamic nations needs to in-
crease their focus on human development.”
The OIC position “to safeguard and promote the rights of
women and their participation in all spheres of life, in accor-
dance with the laws and legislation of Member States” in actual
fact had been at loggerhead with women’s activism, especially
the struggles of Muslim women to ensure the guarantees Islam
provided for women to co-exist as equal partners of men in
family, busin ess, politics, and all other affairs of the social life.
The tendencies of many Muslim rulers, in general, and Muslim
jurists, in particular, to interpret the Shari’a Law of Islam to
restrict women’s equalitarian status and role in society had been
strongly criticized by women activists (for example, Fatima
Ahmed Ibrahim in Sudan, Nawal al Saadawi in Egypt, and
Shireen Ebadi in Iran).
The OIC Charter dictated that OIC should “create conducive
conditions for sound upbringing of Muslim children and youth,
and to inculcate in them Islamic values through education for
strengthening their cultural, social, moral and ethical ideals; to
assist Muslim minorities and communities outside the Member
States to preserve their dignity, cultural and religious identity.”
The situation of education, however, was a source of dissatis-
faction to both of the Muslim and the non-Muslim secularists in
the Islamic world whenever Muslim governments imposed
Islamization or Arabization programs. These citizens believed
in the global nature of educational programs and technological
training and the sensitive needs to offer equal opportunities to
the non-Arab and/or non-Muslim populations to enjoy aca-
demic freedoms, especially the right to expose religious texts to
liberal interpretations side-by-side with the classical madhahib,
and the right to allow local heritages and international literature
to thrive creatively in educational curriculums.
International Law and Muslim Teachings
The OIC announced its commitment “to uphold the objec-
tives and principles of the present Charter, the Charter of the
United Nations and international law as well as international
humanitarian law while strictly adhering to the principle of
non-interference in matters which are essentially within the
domestic jurisdiction of any State; to strive to achieve good
governance at the international level and the democratization of
the international relations based on the principles of equality
and mutual respect among States and non-interference in mat-
ters which are within their domestic jurisdiction.”
This commitment was extremely required in the light of the
existing state of affairs of the world’s challenges to establish a
new order based on peace, justice, and humanitarian relations
between all UN Member States. International law should in-
corporate Shari’a law to strengthen legal principles and to
deepen ethical rules. Serious knowledge, tolerant exchanges,
and secular-religious tolerance could be largely applied to en-
sure possible agreements between these fundamental canons.
Human rights in Islam are most comparable to international
human rights norms, except that Islam transcended the worldly
rules by high ethical spirituality and super principles of for-
giveness to please God in the case of retribution. Subhi ‘Abdu
Sa’ieed (1994: pp. 330-349) affirmed the human rights in Islam
included the rights to life, freedom, equality, justice and fair
trial, and the protection from authority’s abuses and torture, the
protection of blood, property and reputation, and the rights of
minorities. Sa’ieed also mentioned the right to refuge, the free-
dom of movement, and the freedoms of thought, beliefs, and
expression; economic rights, the right to protection from
treachery, exploitation, dispossession of private property; and
the right to work with sufficient returns. Human rights in Islam
contained detailed rights to the family well-being and the
spouses and children’s welfare.
This clear overlapping of the two major sources of human
rights for Muslims should have necessitated top attention in
application by the law-enforcement agencies. A major problem,
however, that curtailed the full enjoyment of these rights was
the partisan performance of authorities in the non-Muslim
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M. E.-T. MAHMOUD
countries which denied wrongfully the right of Muslims to
disseminate knowledge on Islam peacefully, as stipulated in
international norms, and the extremist policies and practices in
the Muslim countries which excluded the right of people to
exercise freedoms of thought and expression.
Earlier, Kamal Hamid Mugeeth (1995: pp. 89-96) noted that
Muslim societies witnessed flourishing civilized thought in the
three centuries right after the Prophet’s Hijra to Medina. “This
is due to the impact of many instruments that regulated the
relationships between jurists or thinkers and the fundamental
texts of Islam, the Qur’an and the Sunna, and the continuous
changes occurring in the social life.”
In Muslim history, according to Mugeeth (1995: p. 89), “the
absence of a religious authority to decide on juristic interpreta-
tions of the texts, the great consideration Muslim jurists gave to
both natural and social phenomena, and the strong presence of
the right to exercise freely and creatively the freedom of
thought promoted the recognition of the right to disagreement,
the prevalence of tolerance, rejection of violence, and the mu-
tual respect of controversial opinions.” What was applied of the
Holy Qur’an depended largely on the juristic decision making,
besides the personal choice of individuals in Muslim societies.
Today, usury, or interest in financial transactions, became a
principal activity in the world system. If a Muslim decided to
deal with usury, she/he would have to either accept the time’s
interpretation of usury as a necessary code of contemporary life,
or to live in a self-closed subsistence economy as the Christian
Mormons did in the US.
Islam and Legal Reforms
Mahmoud (2013: pp. 338-340) documented with reliable evi-
dence the existence of a strong Islamic judicial system of juris-
prudence over long centuries of the Muslim rule of their socie-
ties. In modern times, a politico-legislative and executive crisis
resulted in a total loss of the independent systematic judiciary
the Muslim populations once experienced in old times. A mod-
ern substitute, nonetheless, should be established in line with
the international principles of justice and independence of the
judiciary, in addition to the moral and well-established heritage
of the Islamic fiqh which virtually realized standard rules of
international norms.
In Muslim nations today, the constitutions of Muslim states
must guarantee full independence of the Judiciary as a major
branch of government. New legislations must replace authorita-
tive laws, based on contemporary Ijtihad [scholarly studies].
The judges, attorneys, legal academicians, and the other profes-
sionals who had been unlawfully dismissed for lawful disputes
with state managers should be reinstated in the service of their
nations and the needs of judicial reforms. Committees com-
posed of civil judges, academicians, jurists, and democracy and
human rights activists must join hand in hand the Shari’a jurists
and judges to bring about a new Personal Status Law.
Under a new fair legislation, a woman should have the option
via legal consultation to choose a spouse, ask for inheritance,
divorce, maintenance, or child custody by Muslim jurispru-
dence, or to file a case before civil courts by secular civil law.
The same procedure was suggested for the non-Muslim popula-
tions in Muslim societies. This was what a secular state was all
about: the availability of options and alternatives for citizens of
the State to decide willingly upon their own affairs without
coercive guidance, intrusion, or dictation by State authorities
over their choice and preferences, freedoms of expression, be-
lief systems, or personal rights.
Further Observations and Operational
Strategies
What was new in Muslim faith? In this paper, we empha-
sized the fact that Muslim faith is a constant fact in the life of
Muslims all over the world. We discussed a few schools of
thought and/or movements that established new Islamic and/or
secular formations in the contemporary world system of which
the OIC was most prominent. We did find that the OIC exer-
cised pervasive political, ideological, economic, social, and
psychological activities as collective articulations in many re-
gional and national locations. We also touched upon national
challenges and geopolitical realities interacting in conflict
within the OIC and other groups.
This paper indicated genuine differences, as well as possible
agreements between authentic tenets of Islam and the interna-
tional principles on human rights and justice. We felt that the
Muslim governmental performance and developmental efforts
unfortunately stressed states’ security and military build-up,
whereas intellectual works addressed the dire need of Muslims
to attend key industrial and agricultural advancement, fair pro-
duction relations, and radical improvements for the life of the
vast majority of Muslim populations all over the world. The
comparisons highlighted between Muslim entities and the non-
Muslim western nations revealed the unattended challenges of
progression by Muslim states despite immense pressures for
reform by judicial, educational, and other occupational profes-
sionals and activists.
The challenges facing Muslim nations today had been
equally facing non-Muslim individuals and groups. What was
not quite clear for most westerners and other world entities,
however, was that the same challenges of living in peace and
prosperity with the full enjoyment of human rights and funda-
mental freedoms for non-Muslim populations resembled the
same and one requirement for Muslims to exercise full enjoy-
ment of Islam. As we see it, this philosophical issue is precisely
the reason why serious rethinking of East-West, Muslim-non-
Muslim hostilities should be strongly advanced to end the cri-
sis.
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