PKR Youth leader Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, reiterating arguments framed by his party, told an international forum in Paris that the desire of Muslims to impose Sharia must be parsed by the higher objectives of the revealed law and by a sense of society’s priorities.

Employing the terms ‘maqasid al sharia’ (higher objectives of sharia) and ‘fiqh al awlawwiyat’ (the fiqh of priorities), the Selangor executive councillor said in a keynote speech to the World Affairs Council meeting in the French capital that the issue of sharia “can and must be debated.”

Paris was the scene of a terror attack on the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo , which made the meeting of the Muslim-initiated World Affairs Council there on the topic ‘Challenges and Opportunities Facing the Islamic World’ and the selection of a Malaysian keynote speaker a matter of more than perfunctory interest.

The PKR leader declined to dodge what has become a hot potato in his home country when he opined that critics of sharia must be engaged on “an intellectual level, not with threats and attempts to stifle discourse”.

Nik Nazmi urged the upholding of the ‘Amman Message 2004’ - a widely endorsed statement by King Abdullah of Jordan, urging Muslim unity based on recognition of various schools of Islamic belief and a studied disinclination to de-legitimise believers - as the template for meeting the challenges facing the ummah.

He said the message was a “significant achievement” because it garnered endorsement from a wide spectrum of scholars and political figures, but there was a “need to communicate it confidently and consistently throughout the Muslim world”.

Nik Nazmi placed the ‘Amman Message’ in the context of the moderation, he said, that was the hallmark of Islamic military leaders like Salahuddin Al-Ayubi and Abdul Qadir al-Jazairi, renowned for their chivalry and justness, and of thinkers and scholars like Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Sina and al-Khwarizmi, whose contributions enriched intellectual currents  in the West and the Islamic world.

“We can keep being nostalgic about our glorious past, but we must also understand that it came about because were faithful to our ideals and we were intellectual curious to learn and change for the better,” he said.

Inability to incorporate challenge of moderation

Nik Nazmi attributed the rise of the Islamic State, or daish as it is called in Arabic, to the “literalism” that emerges “when the desire for a quick fix leads to answers that appear authentic but are unable to incorporate our challenge of moderation or the challenges of today’s world to its core.”

He described these challenges as the inability of capitalist economies and technological society to produce more egalitarian polities where social prejudice is eliminated and the dignity of all is protected, regardless of ethnicity or class.

“In such circumstances, the youth often easily fall under the influence of extremist voices offering a means to redress through their grievances through vile acts,” he asserted.

Nik Nazmi defined the challenge facing Muslims as one of how to live lives that are faithful to their religion and at the same time co-existing with others and thriving in a modern environment. In short, how to live a life of faith in the midst of a multifarious modernity?

He said the challenge was even greater with the advent of the Islamic State.

“We must prove that we can be faithful to the tenets of Islam and co-exist in a diverse world. Violence and terror has no place in Islam,” he emphasised.