I think Muslims today need to show the social and human aspects of Islam more than its ideological aspects. We are all aware of how Islam spread to distant parts of the world as a result of Muslims’ contact, trade and good conduct with the people of those regions. Every belief is stronger with its social aspect. At the same time, we heard many stories of people who entered Islam and were shocked when they saw the behaviour of Muslims after that.
Embracing a faith without its social and human dimension makes it hollow and without a core. Many hardliners today are calling for permission to establish Islamic religious parties in our Arab and Islamic world. They must realise that between politics and religion, the reason for the survival of religious names of these parties, in other countries, is the social dimension, in the sense that their structure is social and not ideological.
Also, historically, the fight against communism was done in the name of religion and religion was used to discourage communism, though that fight was basically secular. For example, the Italian Christian Party legalized divorce in the early 1970s, and after that legalised abortion, metres away from the Vatican, but the party still bears the name of Christ and Italy is the world’s first Catholic Christian country.
Christian parties in Europe today are socially structured and historically named due to the Church’s historical role in combating the scourges of religion. Therefore, they find their names a combination of historical Christianity and accomplished democracy.
If we imagine, for example, the establishment of a democratic Islamic party in one of our Arab countries, how can we justify its name? Islam and its companions create disasters between them, and even transformed themselves into dualities between Sunnis and Shias, the upright and the rejectionists, and their beliefs are so strong and rigid that they turn into bombs and explosives.
There are moderate Islam, extremist Islam and other types, and all of them are fighting with each other. It’s difficult to heal these wounds and neither history nor time have been able to do it.
As for democracy, we have nothing from it except its name.
If we raise beliefs to their natural place and get rid of guardianship over religion and focus on what religion calls on us to do from a social and human aspect, it would be possible to speculate or imagine the possibility of social and religious parties but they should not be based on a religious, doctrinal aspect. This is because the dangers of exposing belief to political rights and wrongs are too many and will take them out of the scope of belief.
What is important is that if a political programme is adopted, its goals and objectives must be translated, and the focus must be on its implementation, not the religious texts.
Progress in this field depends on a true understanding of the mission of religion in this life, the centrality of human being in the scheme of affairs, and his social and human role in the first place before he embraces any religion.