Emerging Muslim freethinkers

The information technology, the Internet, has also come to their aid. Another lesser known, but more populous, breed of Muslim intellectuals have taken up pens for pointing out the troublesome aspects of the theological foundations of Islam and are airing their views through increasingly popular websites, such as Islam Watch, Faith Freedom International, Apostates of Islam. More and more intellectually capable writers from Muslim backgrounds are being generated through these Internet-based ventures.

As Muslim countries become increasingly networked to the Internet, the pool of Muslim readers, accessing their messages, will inevitably grow and help their enlightenment; something which is already happening.

Samuel Huntington, in his Clash of Civilizations, quite correctly points to a prominent ongoing clash of Islam with the rest humanity, which is all there for one to see. It is raging by the day and will undoubtedly accentuate over coming decades. Islam’s history, particularly until the European colonial interventions in the Muslim world, has been a monotonous saga of continual war against non-Muslims; it has claimed hundreds of millions of lives from Asia to Africa to Europe. Even the far-off United States was not spared this Islamic brutality: her ship-crews captured and enslaved in North African waters suffered horribly. The war is being reinvigorated again.

Since the 9-11 attacks, there have been no less than 12,800 Islam-inspired acts of violence committed by Muslim militants and mobs globally as tracked by a website (a small fraction of them against Western targets). While this battle now claims thousands of lives annually, millions of lives could be at stake in the not-too-distant future. It is Muslims, who are waging this raging new war against their non-Muslim neighbours all over the world; it is in their hands, too, to end it peacefully. Only a dawn of Islamic enlightenment - which would mean Muslims’ recognition that there is unjustified violence and intolerance integrated in their religion and that these must be abandoned for them to be a peaceful part of the global humanity - can avert this dreadful prospect.

This is a battle not winnable through military might. The global Muslim community’s access to the rather unsavoury views of this emerging band of Muslim freethinkers, and their willingness to pay heed to latter’s messages may end this long-standing war of Islam against non-Muslim humanity with reduced damage to life and property. Or else, humanity stands to lose immensely in this battle of civilisations.

Muslims will lose no less.