“If we aspire to have nūr emerging in our midst, then we must emulate the West” The only nūr that would emerge then is this neūrotic obsession to be patted on the head by the West, and if they like you enough, they might be willing to give you this Bakri Musa-type enlightenment.

The main problem I have with this is the idea that Islām needs to discard the tradition (whether intellectual or otherwise) that we have within it just because it doesn’t conform to the West’s standards. Of course this person with his ‘enlightenment’ is masquerading it by...

saying “oh, I’m not talking about Islām” but what he’s saying *is* amounting to changing Islām, by changing where our epistemic authority lies and by introducing constraints imposed by values foreign to Islām. His ‘enlightenment’ is none other than an attempt at secularising...

Islām, because if “the finest Departments of Islamic Studies are at universities in the West”, then Islām will be reduced to simply an ‘academic’ conception of Islām with a very distinct Western flavour: devoid of isnād, spirituality and practice.

The constrains I’m talking about is the fact that any orthodox Islamic views which are even remotely in contradiction with whatever latest value that secular-liberalism decides to adopt will necessarily be deemed problematic and needs to be removed.

Bakri Musa should stick to surgery and perhaps try to remove the secular-liberal pill he has swallowed before lecturing Muslims about where we should take our deen from. Wallāhu a’lam.