صحیح طریقہ
ٹائمس آف انڈیا (22 اگست 1987) میں مسٹر کے سبرامنیم کا ایک مضمون شائع ہوا ہےاس کا عنوان ہے : ایک حقیقت جس کو مسلمان نظر انداز کرتے ہیں (A Reality Muslims Ignore) اس مضمون میں ہندستانی مسلمانوں کا تجزیہ کیا گیا ہے۔ اس ذیل میں جو باتیں کہی گئی ہیں ان میں سے ایک بات وہ ہے جو مسلمانوں کی "تہذیبی تشخص" کی تحریکوں کے بارے میں ہے ۔ مضمون نگار نے لکھا ہے کہ ایک فرقہ جو ایک وسیع تر مجموعہ ، جیسے ایک قوم کا جزء ہو، وہ اپنے تشخص کو صرف دو طریقوں سے برقرار رکھ سکتا ہے ۔ وہ یا تو وسیع تر مجموعہ کے علی العموم کلچر میں اپنا کوئی بہت خاص حصہ ادا کرے، یا وہ بقیہ لوگوں سے اپنے آپ کو منقطع کر لینے پر اصرار کرے ۔ اول الذکر سے یک جہتی پیدا ہوتی ہے ،جب کہ ثانی الذکر تصادم کی طرف لے جاتا ہے :
A community, as a constituent of a larger entity like a nation, can sustain its identity in two ways. It can either make its own unique contribution to the overall culture of the larger entity or it can insist on cutting itself off from the rest. While the former leads to integration, the latter leads to conflict.
The Times of India, New Delhi, August 22, 1987
رسول اللہ صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم کو مکہ میں "الامین" کہا جاتا تھا۔ تعمیر کعبہ کے مشہور واقعہ میں صبح کو جب لوگوں نے آپ کو کعبہ میں پایا تو وہ کہہ پڑے : هَذَا الْأَمِينُ رَضِينَا (یہ امین ہیں ہم ان پر راضی ہیں) آپ کا امانت دار ہونا آپ کا ایسا امتیاز بن گیا کہ مکہ میں آپ اپنی اسی صفت سے پہچانے جانے لگے۔ یہ تشخص حاصل کرنے کا صحت مندانہ طریقہ ہے ۔ جو لوگ کسی سماج میں اخلاقی یا اصلاحی یا تعمیری اعتبار سے ممتاز ہو جائیں ان کو دوسروں کے درمیان ایسا تشخص حاصل ہوتا ہے جو حقیقی تشخص ہوتا ہے ۔
اس کے برعکس جو لوگ اپنا تشخص اس طرح حاصل کرنا چا ہیں کہ وہ ہر معاملہ میں دوسروں سے الگ ہونے کی کوشش کریں وہ لوگوں کے درمیان ایک قسم کے" اچھوت" بن کر رہ جاتے ہیں۔ان کا تشخص موت کا تشخص ہوتا ہے نہ کہ زندگی کا تشخص۔
Islam in France
By Hanspeter Oschwald
PARIS:
Islam has made huge strides in France, with mosques spreading across the landscape and increasingly self-assured Muslims demanding recognition that this is now a partly Muslim country. Interior Minister Charles Pasqua has instructed his staff to prepare him a report on this strange new "France of the Thousand Mosques" detailing the influence of Islamic fundamentalists. The newspaper and broadcasting have also discovered the "Islamic French" thanks to a major new book by a specialist in Islamic studies and political science professor, Gilles Kepel.
The book, Islam's Suburbs surveys a Muslim community of about 3 million that has often been the target of racism. The numbers have not grown for 15 years, but Muslim consciousness has sharply altered. Kepel, 32, says it is still unclear whether French Muslims will one day be integrated into mainstream French society or simply insert themselves as a foreign body between its folds. But nobody ought to imagine French Muslims will just disappear. Many commentators on the book claim assimilation is inevitable. They say French society and culture is so powerful that even the most radical Muslims will little by little be absorbed. The skeptics prefer the insertion scenario, predicting that Muslims will form their own lobby with spokesmen and institutions that will eventually extract the same sort of recognition from the state enjoyed by Catholics, Protestants and Jews.
That has a catch. As a tolerant Western society, France will readily allot a niche to the purely religious aspects of Islam. But a conflict is in the making over Islam's vision of society and its political implications. The majority French favour a secular state and reject all religious influence on state affairs.
The huge majority of French Muslims are from North Africa and Muslim regions of Black Africa, either migrant workers or holders of French passports. Some are from Turkey. Only a handful are converts of purely French descent.
The bulk of the faithful who bow towards Mecca at the Grand Mosque de Paris in the Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud are underprivileged outsiders clad in cheap clothes- mostly manual workers, many unable to read or write some have never attended any school. Well-off Muslims worship more discreetly or do not turn up for prayers at all, but they provide the cash that makes the flowering of Islam possible. A look at the bell-pushes in the plush West End of Paris shows plenty of residents of Arab extraction. Backing up their contributions are donations from Gulf Arab foundations or from the Islamic Republic of Iran. The flow of cash has ensured that most Muslims have a place of prayer near at hand.
In just 15 years the number of mosques and places of prayer has grown from just a dozen or so in the whole of France to 1,000. There are a total of 635 Islamic congregations or organisations incorporated under French law. The teachers of this new breed of Islam run the gamut from anti-Western militants to advocates of tolerance, but few preach a distinctively French form of Islam. Kepel sets out the choices in his book but does not predict which will win the day.
He says the anti-Western advocates of isolation from mainstream France are currently making the loudest pitch. They find a ready ear among migrants ill at ease among the French, unable to speak the French language properly and chary of becoming integrated. The petty racism of day-to-day life in the midst of Christendom drives many such Muslims to take comfort in their religion.
Kepel's book contains many interviews showing that elderly people rediscover their sense of dignity in Islam and try hard to convey that sense to their children. Younger Muslims mostly identify with Islam but do not regard it as a contradiction to their Western lifestyle. Girls in Muslim families absorb French mores and behaviour more readily than any other group. Kepel proposes as the best solution that the French state fake the initiative and try to integrate Muslims into mainstream life. He says that the minds and hearts of the Muslims will mainly be won in the schools, where the next generation is growing up. (DPA-Feature)
The Hindustan Times, December 11, 1987
