Dr. Murtaza BULUTAY
Expert on Religion and Culture
Almaty / Kazakhstan
Speech delivered by the author during the Round Table meeting with Special Representative of the Department of State of the U.S.A. to Muslim Communities Farah Pandith, held in the U.S. Embassy in Almaty on 13 October 2009.
Dear Guests and Participants,
I am grateful to the U.S. Embassy for giving us this unique opportunity to meet with Special Representative Farah Pandith and share with her our thoughts and suggestions in regard to the progress we would like to see take place in the relationships of the U.S. with the Muslim World in general and Kazakhstan in particular.
There is no doubt that the religion factor is getting more importance in international politics and we witness new initiatives by global organizations and actors to build dialogue among religions, civilizations, and cultures. Despite the fact that the majority of countries in the world accept a secular worldview and state foundation, there are differences in how they perceive and apply secularity. There is no solid consistent approach of the principle of secularity, separation of powers, and the correlation among them—or with religion and religious institutions. The need to develop more efficient state mechanisms to protect democracy and secularity persists.
For many centuries the religious authority, the Church, and the clergy reigned over the West. It was only after the Age of Enlightenment that the West separated Church from State declaring universal human rights, secularity, the rule of law, equality before the law, equality of opportunity, freedom of belief, freedom of speech and so on. I think these high human values and attainments should not remain merely as a reality for developed Western nations and as a utopian fantasy for Muslims and underdeveloped countries but must become a reality for all humankind. Unfortunately, the West has not done enough work to explain the essence of these values and what benefits they bring to societies, including Muslim countries. Hence, the traditional sectarian religious groups, which syncretized profane cultural elements and political heritage with the sacred divine faith, have an unfavorable and unwelcoming view of the liberating values of the West, assuming them suitable exclusively for infidels.
Taking into account that today approximately 25% of the global population is Muslim, we can understand how important it is to explain these values to Muslims in order to get their involvement in democratic processes adopting and implementing secular rules and state order. I see the danger that especially in the last 25 years fundamentalist and delusive radical religious movements, zealot groups and obscurant teachings sponsored in the Muslim world by influential political and business structures and surprisingly and disappointingly fostered and sheltered by the West have become more widespread and powerful, a process similar to the rise of fundamentalist Christian influence in the U.S.A. The message is clear: the more the influence of such destructive powers increases, the more underdeveloped, dependent and uncivilized the Muslim world will remain. The deviant radical groups in the Muslim world fed with scholasticism, zealotry, fanaticism, dogmatism, intolerance, regression, antagonism, obscurantism and violence create an unsurpassable obstacle for the development of Muslims indeed. Their Christian “equivalents” acting with an army of missionaries in Muslim countries and strategically important target territories follow a similar way to proselytize crowds and cut their ties off from the historical heritage by preaching totalitarian sectarian dogmas and restraining free thinking and ability to question. Today, illiteracy and ignorance is the number one catastrophe in the Muslim world: according to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, approximately 47% of Muslims in the world are illiterate. This tragic situation creates a fertile environment for fundamentalist and radical religious forces to abuse human rights and exploit religion as an attractive tool to turn people into zombies apathetic to progressive changes in life and developments in science. Terrorist groups and extremist ideologies have no problem of resourcing in such environments. In today’s globalized world, these problems are not disruptive to only one society or religious community, but a shared concern for the entire planet’s population because we all feel the immediate impact of any malfunction in even a remote part of the world in our daily lives.
All monopolistic sectarian religious schools have failed to bring solutions to problems that accompany the modern life and give moral guidance to people. Confining them are many irrational dogmas and old-fashioned invalid statements, which have no practical meaning in today’s world of exponential development. The evil triangle of exploitative religious groups, with business and financial structures under it, and their manipulation of political power are becoming more widespread and dominant in Muslim countries. This disruptive structure has not brought any goodness to the Muslim World in the course of the last 7-8 centuries during which once flourishing Muslim civilizations collapsed and imperial powers invaded and colonized them. The only way to get out of obscurantism and recession in the Muslim world I can see is by promoting democracy, human rights, transparency, education and secular way of life as the magnificent Qur’an precisely describes. The Qur’an is compatible with the positive outcomes of the modern life in all aspects and even ahead of it and does not contradict with universal values of humanity and science. The faith and action system of the Qur’an recommends the most modern way of life and explains it in detail, in contrast to existing sectarian fundamentalist religious teachings but most people do not know this. The Qur’an is against ignorance, intolerance, religious exploitation of masses, violence in all forms, but promotes freedom of belief and speech, encourages people to use their minds and reason to the highest extent, and to treat others with justice, equality, humanism and requires meritocracy in society and government affairs. Ironically, in many aspects, the Western nations comply with the Qur’an’s principles while Muslims are mislead by non-Qur’anic teachings composing of superstitious beliefs, hearsay, and even nonsense, which restrain Muslims from understanding the Qur’an and its universal messages that promote the above mentioned values. As a result, hundreds of millions of Muslims waste their lives serving puppet religious leaders and obscurant religious teachings and live in poverty and unacceptable conditions infringing human dignity and conscience.
In conclusion, I would like to draw your attention to these alarming facts and encourage all participants of this meeting to dedicate their resources to contribute to above mentioned goals. The true understanding of the unique source of Islam, written evidences of the God – the Qur’an together with God’s scientific laws ruling the universe paves the way for accomplishing such goals. By this way we can fight ignorance, religious exploitation, and violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms and create a developed and wealthy democratic Muslim world that will contribute to the human civilization. The world will become a planet of peace and the mankind will live in prosperity and harmony together. It is high time to conceive that the above mentioned ambitions could be realized only by democratic means and not by military actions or aggression. The dominant powers in today’s world should act as real defenders and preachers of democracy, human rights and freedoms and interact with Muslims friendly. In this context, I wish great success to President Obama’s Administration in this auspicious and peaceful mission.