Mufti Taqi Usmani on Islam and Modernism

Deleted L · Feb 1, 2022

Mufti Taqi Usmani on Islam and Modernism

By Bassam Zawadi

Below are some snippets from Mufti Taqi Usmani’s book, “Islam and Modernism.”

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The greatest challenge for the Islamic world today is to recognize these limits of "Modernity", without interfering with the confined limits of unalterable injunctions of Islam. Unfortunately the present attitude of the Islamic world is in clear contrast to this. Our scholars have been markedly slow in the spheres which demanded their active efforts, while they are actively busy modernizing the unalterable Commandments of Allah with the consequence that Muslims are deprived of the amenities and comforts that modern time has provided to humanity and the evils of modernist are at liberty to prevail in our society with no check from our side. May Almighty Allah give us the ability and courage to fulfill our obligations to modern times while safeguarding our ideological heritage. (page 14)

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Unfortunately, our modernist group wants us to accept the industrial revolution of the West as it is, without an iota of change in it, and thus drown ourselves in their ideological and practical aberrances even before the Machine has taken roots in our society. That is why, instead of developing Science and Technology, this group is spending its energy in molding Islam to bring it in conformity with Western civilization. (page 17)

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While seeking the solution to your problems you have the fear of being called conservative or superstitious or uncivilized by the West. This complex does not allow you to give a serious thought to the true Islamic values. You are always anxious to give Islamic sanction to all those things that have a label of liberalism on them. May be that this line of action brings you some good name in the Western circles, but this is never going to solve your problems nor will it give you the status of a living and free nation. (page 35)

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The Western countries have recently launched great campaigns to preach “Family Planning”. You also followed them in propagating it. For this purpose you consumed your energies to misinterpret the laws of Islam in favour of family planning. But you never thought how China is surviving with its 700,000,000 population? According to Chu-en-lai every new child brings a message of prosperity. In the hue and cry of the Western world you looked at one mouth of a newly born child and felt uneasy to think from where to feed it? But you did not see the two hands of the child to work. The small country like Israel realised the importance of population and has been using all the means of increasing its population. The Westerner had said that population rise is dangerous for developing countries. You accepted this “sincere advice” and imposed birth control as a law, but you failed to see how Vietnam had humbled the big power like America and why the Western countries are scared of China? Americans had declared that in the East they would give financial aid only to those countries that would adopt the birth control. You took it as a sympathetic gesture from them but you did not try to argue why Israel gets the lion’s share in aid in spite of being against the birth control? (page 36)

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Your pen did not move for a single word against the evil customs of our society with reference to marriages, dowry, Mehr, living allowances, housing and inter family relations. You made no move against the defective, time- consuming and out-dated judiciary system, which has deprived the society of justice. In matrimonial matters you could see only one thing, that is, polygamy which is practiced hardly by 10% of people, and you consumed all your efforts in proving it as unlawful The reason of your serious concern against polygamy is that it was initiated from the West and hence it sounded most important to you, while other problems being local, could not achieve your serious consideration. (page 38)