Monday, September 24, 2012

Our Frontiers


A senior alumni of yours truly's Alma Mater avers, in the context of current demonstrations against silly US film portraying beloved Prophet (PBUH), that we are not aware of our real frontiers. "Fontiers of our battles should be against illiteracy, backwardness & social evils", he asserts. And then others from the same community have gone into a good drive about the appropriateness of these words of wisdom.

These too are frontiers of our battles.
And then there are other frontiers too.
The frontier that learned senior wants to divert attention from is also a frontier.
We really do not realize that defending the honour of beloved Prophet (PBUH) is also a frontier.
There is a reason behind that.
The dominant ideas at any time are the ideas of dominant economic powers of the day.
That is west till the moment of writing.
And the prevalent ideas in the west at present have no counterpart of honour of a Messenger of God (AS).
For a few centuries they have been taking liberty with religion.
Atheism is rife in that society and its bad effects are there for all to see but they are incapable of analyzing it - they have lost guidance. Breakdown in family as well as social structure is no mean price to pay.

This is the society that is usually at the back of mind of our western educated class when they deliver admonitions to Muslims.

That society, let us admit for the time being, has overcome illiteracy.
They have made economic progress too - hope that is the opposite of backwardness.
But they are in economic down turn - let us accept that.
But whether we have more social evils than them is a very debatable question.
In fact the situation is more in favour of our own society.

And this really evens out the things between us and the model society that honourable senior has in mind.
This makes any preaching a risky proposition.

And indeed we should, with whole heart, fight against illiteracy, backwardness and social evils.
And we should keep asserting before the west that insulting our beloved Prophet (PBUH) is neither liked nor tolerated in these quarters. Yours truly has a vague feeling that they might start listening - or may be they are already listening.