To think properly as to rationalize thoughts, to be on the positive side of life and to prefer optimism, the theory goes, is to be against extremism.[1][2]
The strategy of enlightened moderation was unveiled by Musharraf during the 2002 OIC Summit Conference in Malaysia.[3]
Musharraf explained his position in an opinion piece that was published in various newspapers in 2004. His plan for enlightened moderation has two sides. It calls "for the Muslim world to shun militancy and extremism and adopt the path of socioeconomic uplift" and "for the West, and the United States in particular, to seek to resolve all political disputes with justice and to aid in the socioeconomic betterment of the deprived Muslim world".[4]
Musharraf pointed out that moderation and enlightenment have been the traits of the Islamic world since the times of Muhammad.[4]
I say to my brother Muslims: The time for renaissance has come. The way forward is through enlightenment. We must concentrate on human resource development through the alleviation of poverty and through education, health care and social justice. If this is our direction, it cannot be achieved through confrontation. We must adopt a path of moderation and a conciliatory approach to fight the common belief that Islam is a religion of militancy in conflict with modernization, democracy and secularism. All this must be done with a realization that, in the world we live in, fairness does not always rule.
Criticism
Fundamentalist Islamic organizations have criticized Musharraf's vision of enlightened moderation. The Jamaat-e-Islami condemns it as a neologism for Westernization and American imperialism. Islam is innately a religion of enlightened moderation, they argue, and needs no Westernized amendments.[5] Masooda Bano points out that the US is not likely to "suddenly metamorphose into a benevolent entity, which will 'resolve all political disputes with justice.'"[6]
Compare and contrast to "Enlightened Underdevelopment." 1994. The Spirit and Power of Place: Human Environment and Sacrality: Essays Dedicated to Yi-Fu Tuan. In Rana P.B. Singh (ed.). Pps: 87-100. Varanasi, India: NGSI Publications No. 41. Concurrently published under same title in National Geographical Journal of India 40,1-4:87-100.
Islamic fundamentalism has been defined as a revivalist and reform movement of Muslims who aim to return to the founding scriptures of Islam. The term has been used interchangeably with similar terms such as Islamism, Islamic revivalism, Qutbism, Islamic extremism, Islamic activism, but also criticized as pejorative, a term used by outsiders who instead ought to be using more positive terms such as Islamic activism or Islamic revivalism.
Jamaat-e-Islami, or Jamaat as it is commonly known, is an Islamist political party based in Pakistan and founded by Abul Ala Maududi. It is the Pakistani successor to Jamaat-e-Islami, which was founded in colonial India in 1941. Its objective is the transformation of Pakistan into an Islamic state, governed by Sharia law, through a gradual legal, and political process. JI strongly opposes capitalism, communism, liberalism, and secularism as well as economic practices such as offering bank interest. JI is a "vanguard party", whose members are intended to be leaders spreading party beliefs and influence. Supporters not thought qualified to be members may become "affiliates", and beneath them are "sympathizers". The party leader is called an ameer. Although it does not have a large popular following, the party is quite influential and considered one of the major Islamic movements in Pakistan, along with Deobandi and Barelvi.
Zubaida Jalal, is a Pakistani politician, a teacher, libertarian and social activist, who served as the Defence Production Minister from August 2018 until April 2022
The Muttahida Majlis–e–Amal is a political alliance consisting of conservative, Islamist, religious, and right-wing parties of Pakistan. Naeem Siddiqui proposed such an alliance of all the religious parties back in the 1990s.
The Barelvi movement, also known as Ahl al-Sunnah wa'l-Jamaah is a Sunni revivalist movement following the Hanafi and Shafi'i schools of jurisprudence, and Maturidi and Ashʿari schools of theology with strong Sufi influences and with hundreds of millions of followers. It is a broad Sufi-oriented movement that encompasses a variety of Sufi orders, including the Chistis, Qadiris, Soharwardis and Naqshbandis as well as many other orders and sub-orders of Sufism. They consider themselves to be the continuation of Sunni Islamic orthodoxy before the rise of Salafism and Deobandi Movement.
Shaykh Abdur Rahman, also known as Abdur Rahman Shaykh, was the leader and the administrative head of the banned terrorist organization Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh.
Israr Ahmad, was a Pakistani based Islamic scholar, orator and theologian. He developed a following in South Asia but also among some South Asian Muslims in the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America.
Javed Ahmad Ghamidi is a Pakistani philosopher, educationist, and a scholar of Islam. He is also the founding President of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences and its sister organisation Danish Sara.
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami is a Pakistani Islamist extremist, fundamentalist and terrorist organisation affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Saeed Uz Zaman Siddiqui was a Pakistani jurist and legislator of great prominence who formerly served as the 15th Chief Justice of Pakistan and, prior to that, the 7th Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court. At the time of his death, he was serving as the 31st Governor of Sindh.
Abul A'la al-Maududi was an Islamic scholar, Islamist ideologue, Muslim philosopher, jurist, historian, journalist, activist, and scholar active in British India and later, following the partition, in Pakistan. Described by Wilfred Cantwell Smith as "the most systematic thinker of modern Islam", his numerous works, which "covered a range of disciplines such as Qur'anic exegesis, hadith, law, philosophy, and history", were written in Urdu, but then translated into English, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Burmese, Malayalam and many other languages. He sought to revive Islam, and to propagate what he understood to be "true Islam". He believed that Islam was essential for politics and that it was necessary to institute sharia and preserve Islamic culture similarly as to that during the reign of the Rashidun Caliphs and abandon immorality, from what he viewed as the evils of secularism, nationalism and socialism, which he understood to be the influence of Western imperialism.
Madrassas of Pakistan are Islamic seminaries in Pakistan, known in Urdu as Madaris-e-Deeniya . Most madrassas teach mostly Islamic subjects such as tafseer, hadith, fiqh and Arabic ; but include some non-Islamic subjects, which enable students to understand the religious ones. The number of madrassas grew dramatically during and since the rule of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. They are especially popular among Pakistan's poorest families, in part because they feed and house their students. Estimates of the number of madrasas vary between 12,000 and 40,000. In some areas of Pakistan they outnumber the underfunded public schools.
The Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir or Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir (JIJK) is an Islamic political party based in the city of Srinagar in the Indian administered territory of Jammu and Kashmir. It is distinct from the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. The organisation's stated position on the Kashmir conflict is that Kashmir is a disputed territory and the issue must be sorted as per UN or through tripartite talks between India, Pakistan and representatives of Kashmir.
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, previously known as Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, or Jamaat for short, is the largest Islamist political party in Bangladesh. On 1 August 2013, the Bangladesh Supreme Court cancelled the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami, ruling that the party is unfit to contest national elections.
Chaudhry Niaz Ali Khan was a civil engineer, agriculturalist, and philanthropist who founded "Dar ul Islam Movement" and "Dar ul Islam Trust" in South Asia and "Dar ul Islam Trust" Institutes in Pathankot and Jauharabad. Besides a philanthropist, Niaz was also a civil servant, and a landowner. He was the member of All-India Muslim League and a participant of the Pakistan Movement with the ultimate aim of creating the Muslim-majority areas of British India.
Jamaat-e-Islami is an Islamist movement founded in 1941 in British India by the Islamist author, theorist, and socio-political philosopher, Syed Abul Ala Maududi. It developed under the umbrella of Darul Uloom Deoband.
Muhammad Ahsan Dar is a Kashmiri Islamist militant separatist leader from Jammu and Kashmir. He was the founder of an Islamist militant group called Ansarul Islam in mid-1980s, which later became the core of Hizbul Mujahideen. Formed in September 1989, Hizbul Mujahideen was an umbrella group of a dozen Islamist groups in the Kashmir Valley and was sponsored by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and Jamaat-e-Islami. Ahsan Dar served as the head of the united group for a few years, but was marginalised the Jamaat-e-Islami patron Syed Salahuddin. He later founded a new group called Muslim Mujahideen in 1992, which operated for a few years. It was eventually neutralised by Hizbul Mujahideen and Indian security forces, and Ahsan Dar retired from militancy.
Moderate Islam and moderate Muslim are labels that are used within counterterrorism discourse as the complement of "Islamic extremism" and imply that supporting Islamic terrorism is the characteristic of a "radical" faction within Islam, and a "moderate" faction of Muslims denounces extremist violence such as Islamic terrorism, militant jihadism and radical Islamism.
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