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Iftikhar Ahmad
A comparison was made between so called Muslim forced marriages with practices seen in mediaeval England when the whole of Europe was under the cloud of “Dark Ages”.
It is un-Islamic to force a person to get married. There is no compulsion. This right was given to Muslims in the 6th century by the most modern world religion renowned as Islam. The British Muslim community is living in an alien culture. The schools are there to anglicize the future generations of Muslims. Majority of them leave schools with low grades or without any qualification because they were not taught academic English. They can but speak in local accents making them misfit for the British society at large as well as for the whole world.
There is no arrangement for the younger generation to learn Arabic and Urdu languages in schools. They are unable to read and understand Islamic literature and poetry making them cut off from their cultural roots.
Majority of British Muslims are from the Indian sub-continent. It is a closed knit community living physically in the west but mentally living back at home, which is only seven hours from London. The parents would like their young ones to have a good start in life including finding a suitable partner for marriage. Sometimes it creates problem and the British media and the politicians start blaming Islam and the Muslim community.
They should blame themselves for ignoring the needs and demands of the Muslim children who need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers. It will help to raise their standard of education as well as help them to understand and resolve the issues and problems of the western society.
During and after Crusades, Europeans and especially English had contacts with Islamic civilization resulted in the Renaissance Movement. According to a prominent German Orientalist Gerard Andress,
the Islamic civilization is the basis of the Western and they have more in common than in difference. He emphasized the important role of Muslim intellectuals such as Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sinai and AL-Farahi in reviving the western civilization.
These pioneers are extremely important to researchers in the fields of religions, history, sciences and philosophy. The western citizen must and needs to understand what the Islamic civilization with its authenticity and greatness has presented to the world, not only because of its old heritage or the contributions it gave to Europe but also through the modern Muslim thinking that still in the shadow. The term Judeo-Christian civilization should be abondand and replaced by Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization. The new language should be used in all venues starting with media, academics, politicians and Church leaders. Islamic values are not only compatible with Western culture and they are almost identical. The idea of interaction between Europe and the Muslim world is very possible and necessary too because of the shared geography and heritage as well as the shared future. But both sides lack the awareness of the common things they have.
There is still a big margin of shared thinking and values between Europe and the Muslim world due to common history, intellectual heritage and geography. The Muslim Spain and the Ottoman Empire directly contributed for the advancement of European civilization where Jews and Christians enjoyed religious freedom, lived peaceably and productively together—a coexistence that was impossible elsewhere in Europe or even in the so called modern civilized West, where Muslim community is subject to discrimination in all walks of life.
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