Social cohesion? Or just more hypocrisy and hubris ...

The allegedly liberal UK thinktank CIVITAS has founded a "Centre for Social Cohesion". The Centre's blog (which, from what I can see, is the full extent of the Centre's activities) contains a recent post attacking the UK government for seeking advice from one Dr Ataullah Siddiqui about how Islam can be taught in educational institutions with a view to curbing the radicalisation of British Muslim youth.

The blog then goes into a monologue about Dr Siddiqui's links to the Pakistani Jamaat-i-Islami political party and his alleged ideological affiliation to Syed Maududi and other Islamis ideologues.

I myself have carefully studied the works of these ideologues. I now find their work to represent a somewhat disturbing form of heterodoxy, though it is not necessarily anymore dangerous than, say, the Christian heterodoxy of people like Fred Nile and Danny Nalliah.

What I find really disturbing about conservative thinktanks is that they blab on and on about Islamist thinking seeping into Muslim circles. Yet they turn a blind eye to the Christian religious radicalism that is becoming more influential on their side of the ideological divide.

The hubris and double standards of allegedly conservative thinktanks is little more than a thin veneer hiding what is in reality their sectarian prejudices.

I left this message on the blog. Somehow I doubt they will publish it.

It makes me laugh when I see cultural conservatives parading as liberals and pretending their sectarian prejudices are 'social cohesion'.

I am an Australian Muslim who started reading Maududi after attending an Anglican Cathedral School in Sydney Australia and being exposed to the works of Protestant fundamentalists like Francis Schaffer.

I could see little difference between Maududi's message and that of Schaffer's "How Then Should We Live". Both authors argue that religion and politics are inseparable, and that religious activists must enter the political scene.

What made Maududi nore effective is that Islam, like Judaism, actually has a sacred law. Further, Islamic sacred law has actually been implemented in recent times.

I personally regard Maududi's approach as heterodox in the extreme. However, for allegedly conservative thinktanks to be attacking someone whose Christian equivalent they remain strangely silent on is the height of hypocrisy and double-standards.

The day think tanks like yours are honest enough to face up to the Jewish and Christian Maududi's in your midst is the day Western Muslims can take you seriously.

As Christ said, there's little point looking for specks in your brother's eye when your own eye is filled with logs.

If you choose not to allow this comment on this blog, I'll be placing it on my own.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007