The Pakistan prime minister [Imran Khan] has his own ideas of what ails Muslim societies. Last week, he held an online discussion on ‘Islam, society and ethical values’, with scholars from various countries participating. The conversation was telecast on national television. The credentials of some of the participants cannot be disputed. Yet the discourse was hardly illuminating and had little to do with the real challenges the Muslim world is confronting and the causes for its backwardness.
For the prime minister, corruption and rising sex crimes are the two chief evils in the Muslim world. His major worry revolves around how the youth can be protected from the “invasion of social media on their faith and religious and ethical values”. He stressed the need to save young Muslims from being “inundated with obscenity and pornographic material available on the internet”. The scholars seemed to agree that Muslim youth should be taught how to deal with the challenges of modern life.
That discourse sounded surreal given the nature of the problems faced by Muslim-majority countries. The prime ministerial observations and questions during the discussion revealed a narrow world outlook. In fact, such views can be taken as symptomatic of all that has caused the backwardness of Muslim countries. The real issue, as Turkish scholar Mustafa Akyol has described it, is the “reopening of Muslim minds”. It’s about turning to reason, freedom, tolerance and enlightenment.
But last week’s...
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