General Pervez Musharraf's article "Enlightened Moderation" was published on June 2, 2004. Every thoughtful Pakistani while agreeing with General Musharraf, with the present pathetic state of the Muslim Ummah, would like to ask him to about his own country which has been suffering, with sectarian killings where a Muslim is killing another Muslim.
Why is Pakistan blamed by the West for being the breeding ground for Muslim militants? General Musharraf has also twice narrowly escaped from misguided terrorists, who unfortunately belonged to the armed forces.
General Musharraf will be in a more effective position to advice the Ummah if he can rid Pakistan of the bigot zealots and 'can remove those laws from the statute books which are a source of discrimination among the Pakistanis.
General Musharraf should follow the guiding principles of Quaid-e-Azam, regarding state and religion relationship. Quaid-e-Azam in his speech on 11 August 1947, made it very clear that religion will be a personal matter and state will have nothing to do with it.
Unless and until the Muslim countries are not prepared to adopt modern knowledge of political systems ie the democracy with values of open society and an emphasis on science and technology, they will be facing the humiliation of the West.
It is unfortunate that most of Muslim scholars don't accept that the modern democratic system is the best system to meet the present world's challenges.
Advancement of scientific knowledge is still considered, by most religious leaders, as against Islamic teachings.
As long as they are possessed with the notion that whatever bad or good is happening in one's life is the will of God not emphasising that the Creator has given all the power to a person to choose between good and bad and it is his own doing which makes his life worse.
In our land of the pure, where majority of the population is still illiterate, it has been easier for bigots to dominate the masses with their understanding of Islam. It is the responsibility of General Musharraf to make Pakistan a role-model for other Muslim countries by establishing real democracy and rule of law and respect for the constitution.
As long as General Musharraf compromises for political reasons and allows those persons to be ministers and leader of opposition who are against of enlightened modernisation, it will be preaching without honesty of objective.
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