Sayed Dhiya Al-Mousawi (who also writes a daily column fro Al-Wasat newspaper) shows how clerics should think like:
Bahraini Researcher Dhiaa Mussawi: Women Should be Rulers in the Arab and Muslim World. I Call for Understanding the West, Not Dissolving in It.
The following are excerpts from an interview with the Bahraini researcher Dhiyaa Mussawi, which was broadcast by Al-Arabiya TV on September 21, 2005
Dhiyaa Mussawi: First of all, of course I don’t think that Islam is against women. Second, I think part of the crisis in the Arab world is that no Arab country is ruled by a woman. I believe women can even be rulers, not only judges. This is my ideological belief, which I can support with jurisprudence. Some scholars, like Sheik Shams Al-Din and Fadhlallah called for that. We believe that women…
The interviewer: You mean women should be rulers?
Dhiyaa Mussawi: Yes. The problem is that we still live in a male-dominated society.
[…]
The Western world thinks about reaching Mars in 2015, while we are still debating the question of women driving, like some of our brothers in Saudi Arabia are doing.
[…]
The interviewer: You are not trying to make points with the West?
Dhiyaa Mussawi: Absolutely not. I wish for a future and for coexistence between people. I believe in the verse “Call (people) to the way of the Lord with wisdom and goodly exhortation,” and not in calling (people) to the way of the Lord with goodly explosives belts, or bombing them in the most gracious way.?
[…]
We must strengthen the common ground in the mentality of the believing youth, instead of allowing Muslims to develop an outlook based on explosive historical stories, so they will explode in New York, London, or any other place.
[…]
The interviewer: You often call for opening up to the West. You emphasize this.
Dhiyaa Mussawi: I do not advocate opening up to the West. I call for understanding the West rather than dissolving in it. There is a difference.
The interviewer: If I called for opening up to the West, nobody would accept it, so you are trying to…
Dhiyaa Mussawi: I am not trying to dress it up with pretty words. The West exists. I object to the constant hunt for the Western “demon”. The West is not all black. The West has anthropology, and human sciences. Many of our sheiks, when they are sick, they go to hospitals in Britain, America, France, and so on. We can adopt the Japanese mentality. Despite the catastrophes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese benefited from the Western organizational ingenuity, from the institutions in the society, from the rule of law and so on. They adopted all these, and began to produce… This is the difference between us and them. When we hate someone, we see only as a demon. We see him as a jinn. At the same time, as you can see, everything you read, the media, the press – it all comes from the West. Yet I do not advocate Westernizing Muslim society.
MEMRI TV 9/21/2005 Clip 900
See? They ain’t all bad. Just most of ’em!
hat tip News re-Blog
Comments
Way to go Sayed!
A single ray of light in a dark night.
Dhiaa Mussawi has a large boulder to roll uphill. His argument for engaging the West is complex while simply hating the West is simple. The haters have the advantage.
You need a nation to enact his program, embracing the modernity offered by the West while retaining the best of Arab culture, to become a model of liberty and prosperity. Then you won’t need philosophers to argue its case. The people will come up with their own arguments. Basically, what you need is an Arab equivalent of Israel.
Steve
Way to go Sayed!
This is quite interesting, if only there were more of them around.
The problem is even those that live in the west and benefit from it often do it with ‘bad grace
Way to go Sayed!
Good on him.
I just wish that there were more loud voices proclaiming this. Japan isn’t westernized – they have their own culture and their own beliefs, yet they are accepted and integrated into the modern world.
Arab nations can do the same thing if they can work past tribal xenophobia and stop trying to recreate a 7th century religious utopia that, like socialism, has failed miserably since its inception.
–Ethan
Way to go Sayed!
hey shroof, the justification is, so saudi men will have less accidents. he he