We affirm that anyone who considers himself secular is secular. We reject the right of others to decide who is secular and who is not.
In this way, someone could believe that strictly applying the Shari`a in a Muslim country is perfectly consistent with secularism and HOW DARE anyone tell him otherwise.
These people want to deny the meaning and applicability of Islamic categories but want to maintain that their own categories are objective and decisive. Unfortunately for them, our categories are from God. Their categories are just figments of their imagination.
Some academics are the most inconsistent in this regard unfortunately. They hyper-analyze every Islamic category, even the category “Islamic” itself. They ultimately decide that, contrary to what Muslims believe and what Islam says in its teachings, there is no fact of the matter regarding what is or is not “Islam,” etc. But in the course of their deconstruction, they employ all kinds of academic and Western categories and methods without batting an eye. It goes without question that those categories and methods are objective, but when Muslims talk about what Islam is and what constitutes being a Muslim in their works of theology, they are just engaged in power dynamics and political designations that don’t really amount to anything other than jostling for authority. Yeah, right.
We affirm that anyone who considers himself secular is secular. We reject the right of others to decide who is secular…
Posted by Daniel Haqiqatjou on Thursday, September 8, 2016
secularism, identity politics
“We reject the right of others to decide who is Muslim and who is not Muslim.” Then there was the bit of who is secular and who is not? You are generall defined by who you are, which religion you follow and normally defined by others and yourself. Why get all upset about how people view you? Who cares? That’s a Hillary Clinton cliche she used in Congressional hearings on a frequent basis, just thought I would throw that in.
Remember that joke athiest who said something along the lines of ‘we are all athiest with regards to the vast majority of gods throughout history, an athiest denies merely one god more…’
This MSD bullshit looks a lot like that.
(The answer to the athiest? We are all vegetarians, of course! We don’t eat the vast majority of the world’s animals. We Muslims merely don’t not eat a couple or so less.)