October 09, 2007	Tuesday	Ramazan 26, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 8: Pakistan was in no immediate danger of Talibanisation from extremist pockets in some areas of the country as these forces had no viable economic, political or social agenda.

This was stated by Dr Manzoor Ahmad, Rector International Islamic University at a seminar organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute here on Monday.

He said that different religious organisations might differ in their strategy and tactics but in the last analysis they had no other alternative scheme of things or plan or any inkling of modern sensibilities.

Elaborating his point he said that the typical model of many organisations that were working in Muslim world and their basic formulations, with slight variations of emphasis, agreed at the establishment of “khilafat” as the prime duty of Muslims for which coercive methods could be used.

Once established the task of the Islamic state was to enforce Shariah laws on all except non-Muslims. It was held that Shariah laws dealt with interpersonal, inter-community and international relations as well as purely personal matters as faith and had to be enforced like the Taliban did in Afghanistan. The use of force was permissible and could be necessary to impose Islam all over the world, an objective that could be achieved through “Jihad”.

He said that nations did interfere in the affairs of other nations (states) but they did so covertly. But Islam enjoined open and overt dealings.

Talking about the early days of Islam, Dr Ahmad said, a doctrinal system emerged from the pure religion, which was called “Imman”. He said that system was coercive and exclusionist in nature that left no room for other opinions.

He said that extremism could be justified in the doctrinal structure of any religion. To counter that it was necessary to have a new understanding of the Quran.”

There was a need to build a different paradigm of Islam keeping the ground realities in mind that would necessitate that freedom fights were separated and distinguished from attempts of Islamic revival.

“Subjugation of nations by others was intrinsically evil. The struggle for independence and vacation of occupation must be achieved on a human plane without any prejudice to race, religion, caste and gender”.

The IIUI rector said the picture of Islam as portrayed by the protagonists of the doctrinal system gave the western media the chance to propagate that Islam was engaged in terrorism. But Islam was a religion which was not merely a system of laws. It basically dealt with inner transformation and that political power and its attainment was not an end but a possible byproduct of being a good Muslim.

Laws were also meant to achieve maximum good in the society. Laws were not beyond and above moral appraisal which was a continuous process and was dependent on the collective conscience of a given society in a given spatio-temporal framework.