Liberalism in Islam - Shaykh Ibn Uthaymeen

[Omar del Sur]

 

[HiraanBorn]

We have a situation in modern times that the majority of Muslim nations follow a half-hearted form of Sharia and relegate it to a second place below secular western law. Of course, liberalism has influenced these secular western legal codes we see in use around the Muslim world today.

I'd also like to add that the modern idea of liberalism is different from the historical/original meaning of liberalism. Liberalism originally meant freedom from the restrictions of absolute rulership and the application of greater political rights.

It also advocated for free-market systems and an end to royalist/mercantilist monopolies which removed significant barriers to social mobility.

 

[Hamzza]

We have a situation in modern times that the majority of Muslim nations follow a half-hearted form of Sharia and relegate it to a second place below secular western law. Of course, liberalism has influenced these secular western legal codes we see in use around the Muslim world today.

I'd also like to add that the modern idea of liberalism is different from the historical/original meaning of liberalism. Liberalism originally meant freedom from the restrictions of absolute rulership and the application of greater political rights.

It also advocated for free-market systems and an end to royalist/mercantilist monopolies which removed significant barriers to social mobility.

The bigger problem we have today is the Muslim youth who have an idea of Islam that's completely in conflict with the real Islam. I don't know if you noticed it but some users here were recently posting threads like 'I don't agree with apostasy law', and 'I love ex-Muslims', this is, without doubt, the result of the watered-down version of the religion being thought to the youth by apologists.

Due to such sugar-coating and the adoption of popular mottoes like Islam is the religion of peace, the impression many Muslims have regarding Islam is totally different to that of Muslims of the past.

 

[HiraanBorn]

The bigger problem we have today is the Muslim youth who have an idea of Islam that's completely in conflict with the real Islam. I don't know if you noticed it but some users here were recently posting threads like 'I don't agree with apostasy law', and 'I love ex-Muslims', this is, without doubt, the result of the watered-down version of the religion being thought to the youth by apologists.

Due to such sugar-coating and the adoption of popular mottoes like Islam is the religion of peace, the impression many Muslims have regarding Islam is totally different to that of Muslims of the past.

Yes, you're absolutely right this is the bigger problem. Unfortunately, the root cause of this problem is both a result of the socio-political effects of colonialism and modern western interventionism.

Modern apologists, in my opinion, only play a subordinate role in the bigger geopolitical game going on since the 19th-century colonial era. The strength of the West and Muslim worlds reaction to it has been one characterised by compromises in Islamic political ideology and power. It is in human nature when one is weak to submit to the strong. This is commonly the case.

Most modern Muslim nations had to adopt Western secular-liberalist legal codes and political systems in the latter half of the 20th century because the geopolitical situation called for it. We did it in order to strengthen ourselves politically, militarily, and economically, so that European imperialism wouldn't overrun us again. The Japanese did the same early on, as did the Chinese and others along them.

Well, it's safe to say that it was more or less a failed experiment since a significant portion of the Muslim world is still politically unstable and militarily inadequate. The Islamic revivalism since the 1970s has done little to deal with these worldly problems but it did reorientate us towards having more faith on the Qur'an & Sunnah as we once did alhamdulillah.