Anwar Ibrahim took his message of consonances between liberal values and Islam to Cairo, the intellectual heart of the Arab world, last week when he addressed a session of Liberal International's 56th congress.

Liberal International is devoted to spreading the values of freedom and human rights throughout the world.

Addressing the plenary session of the congress, Anwar reiterated his view, aired at several conferences in the recent past, that he saw no contradiction between values espoused by the Enlightenment and the maqasid al-Sharia, which is the higher objectives of the Islamic Law.

The latter was given depth and resonance by the famous Andalusian legal scholar al-Shatibi, who explained that the sharia's aims were the preservation of religion, life, intellect, family and wealth.

anwar lodge police report 210709 04 Anwar ( right ) said these ideals were a precursor to the Enlightenment ideals of liberal democracy and constitutional government, raising speculation that intellectual currents now ascendant in the world may well originate in traditions seemingly opposed to the hubs in which they had come to fruition.

In this respect, Anwar was saying what several thinkers, in surveying the intellectual patrimony of the best that has been said and thought in this world, have long been contending - that these philosophic patterns have been the slowest of growths and the rarest of blossomings.

Anwar maintained the seeds of al-Shatibi's thought were sown in "the Prophet's Last Sermon where he asserts the importance of property rights and the sanctity of contracts, women's rights and racial equality."

"Remember," Anwar reminded a distinguished audience of European and Arab intellectuals, "this was 1400 years ago!"

From this standpoint, Anwar drove home his oft-repeated point that "we can confront the theory of clashing civilizations," a theme of some western intellectuals who see Islam and the West as unalterably opposed.

Highest purpose of education

Flying in the face of this thesis, Anwar contented: "Nothing in the recent or distant history of the Muslim world suggests an inherent incompatibility between Islam, Muslim people and liberal values."

Elsewhere in his speech, Anwar dwelt on the content of what he felt would make for a good education for citizenship in liberal society.

He said the elements of this education would equip students to know the best that has been said, thought and created in this world.

"If we can reach this ideal then perhaps we can realise what Orestes Brownson envisioned as a society in which the government looks to its people for inspiration and wisdom.

Ubudiah Mosque Perak Malaysia "As such Muhammad al Ghazzali believed that citizens trained to be real participants in civil society are no doubt resolved to affect the quality of the day and bring reform wherever needed, and this as, Thoreau said, is the highest of the arts."

He brought his exploration of the consonances between Western thinkers and Islamic ones to a humanely liberal conclusion:

"When citizens are made to feel that they can affect the quality of the day, they must bring to the effort two qualities - a tentativeness of outlook and a firm commitment to chosen values.

"A tentativeness of outlook presupposes that we do not possess certainty, an all-knowingness that precludes discussion and debate and leads to authoritarianism.

"One would think that this attitude precludes religious belief. It does not and it cannot because the highest purpose of education raises the question of ultimate purpose" which Anwar implied is a religious question.

He ended his peroration thus: "In sum, liberalism equips a citizen to know that in the mixture of beauty and ugliness, virtue and baseness in which a person finds him or herself in this world, he or she must want to be on the side of the beautiful and the virtuous."