In conjunction with the 20th anniversary of IKIM, the Institute organized an international conference on “Reorienting the Muslim Mind: Charting the Future” on 10 – 11 July 2012.
The conference’s objectives include to identify the real problem(s) besetting the Muslim community today, how to deal with the problems, and to offer explanation or answers to get out of them.
Four international speakers were specially invited to deliberate on the subject matter. All basically agree that the root of the Muslims’ dilemma today boils down to the problem of knowledge. This primarily entails ignorance, misunderstanding, misgivings and confusions about religion.
In the welcoming speech at the beginning of the conference, Datuk Nik Mustapha Nik Hasan, IKIM’s Director-General said that “Islam is perhaps the world’s most misunderstood religion. Islam and Muslims have been associated with extremism, terrorism, backwardness and all sorts of negativities one can imagine.”
He continued that observing from the overwhelming prejudices, biases and ill treatments from the primarily Western culture and media, it is extremely difficult for the Muslims to restore, let alone command, the honour and respect they once enjoyed in history.
He explained further that the current predicaments suffered by Muslims worldwide “are due to their own doings and attitudes of not actually living up to the standards prescribed by Islam. They seem to have failed to appreciate the real issues or principles of truth and wisdom in religion, lose interest in knowledge and give priority to petty things (trivialities).”
“Ignorance thus takes place, confusions arise to new heights, resulting in disunity, corruptions, economic downfalls, military incapacitation, increasing criminal rates, ethical crisis, etc. – almost everything negative about a decent civilisation. Consequently, Muslims now lag far behind other cultures.”
I cannot but agree with the foregoing statements. Generally, a considerable number of Muslims do not sufficiently understand their religion. As a result, they internally fail to practice Islam properly, and externally, become exposed to the ways of thinking, ideologies, philosophies and lifestyles coming from alien cultures and civilizations.
The lack of religious understanding makes it easier for weak Muslims to be influenced by those foreign worldviews and way of life. Not knowing that they run counter to Islam, they adopt those ideas and behaviours and spread them to fellow Muslims consciously or unconsciously, among others, through their decisions and policy makings.
Therefore, the problems of the Muslims are two-fold in nature: internal and external. Both are equally destructive, and need to be handled with wisdom, i.e. knowledge.
To improve the aforementioned Muslims’ situation, their educational system(s) need to be reviewed and revamped to instill and inculcate right values to produce a more prepared Muslim generations intellectually and spiritually.
This bodes well with the very raison d’etre of IKIM itself. It was again reiterated by its DG that “the 20th anniversary of IKIM in general, and the international conference in particular, will mark a new chapter in IKIM’s endeavours to reinstate the importance of knowledge and education, and to disseminate a better understanding of Islam to both Muslims and non-Muslims audiences, and in the process, building bridges between the two target groups.”
With the introduction of the new IKIM tagline, ‘Understand Islam Build Civilization,’ Datuk Nik Mustapha states that the Institute aspires to stress to the Muslims that it is extremely important for them to first and foremost understand their own religion if they are really serious about coming out from the current plights and dilemmas.
This has to happen across the board in every discipline of knowledge and at every level of the ummah. Muslims are to come back and adhere genuinely to their two most important references, the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Prophet, with proper understanding guided by the wisdom of reliable and authoritative ulama’.