Muslim Conferences: Who Picks Their Topics?
Dr. Pasha
(Bringing Islam to the World One Concept at a Time!
Taking the Qur'an to Every Home and Heart that Needs It --
And which One Does Not?)
Islam is big business. And so are the Muslims.
For both Muslims and non-Muslims.
On any given day, there is tons of money to be made off of Islam and Muslims. And it may not require a lot of brains or resources. Muslims are an easy prey for anyone who cares to hunt them.
It is truly amazing how many careers are constructed using Islam and Muslims as fodder. By both Muslims and non-Muslims.
How many livelihoods are made!
Maybe it is God Almighty’s way of using the crumbs from the table of his Deen, Islam, and his people, Muslims, to feed and clothe countless among his creation that would not, or could not, do it using any other means.
“Halal Meat” is just one of them. And who can say it is not Big Business, with capital letters B & B? And most people don’t even understand the ABC of that business or its background, origin and growth.
To what extent it is part of the growth of Islam in the world, no one perhaps even asks that question, leave alone try to answer it in any serious way.
So are Muslim conferences and seminars. They are a rich source of raking up wealth for some individuals and organizations.
Often, these conferences are little more than cattle shows for parading prominent “Islamic” personalities of the day. And use their names – and their Muslim and Islamic Star Power – to attract Muslim participation and money, often in millions of dollars.
Questions as to what the true purpose of any of these conferences is and, at the end of the day, how that purpose is achieved or fulfilled, is not something anyone asks or answers.
I have long wondered about things like who selects the topics for the conferences that Muslims organize. Where do the marching orders come from? Who are the real players in this game, the key decision makers?
If you were to know the inside story, you would soon realize that often it is no better than watching sausages being mixed and ground out.
And then maybe you should ask, I suppose everyone should ask: Where is this particular topic coming from? What is the origin and background of this topic?
And whose topic is it anyway? Who made the choice? Who decided that this topic was important?
And for what specific reasons? Why is this particular topic important in and of itself?
Or why is this topic more important than some other topics that may be similar or dissimilar to this one?
We all have a right to answers to these questions – and a million other questions like them.
To ask them is a sign of being educated and aware. To demand answers for them is to claim some of the most basic of our human rights.
And to teach and train Muslims to ask these questions, and to demand answers for them, is to spread true Islamic awareness around the world. It is part of taking the message of the Qur’an to every home and heart that needs it – and which one does not?
And then it is a sign of Socio-Islamic maturity and sophistication to wonder if the conference idea, for this particular conference, and topic selection, this particular topic, is truly a product of careful thought, or just another exercise in mindless floundering to which Muslims are so often vulnerable.
Who really inspired the idea if not actually dictated the topic itself? This is often a relevant and worthwhile question with regard to every single organized Muslim event that takes place around the world?
I have argued in the past that Muslims generally take their agenda – often without doing any due deliberation – from the mass media: television, newspapers and such.
What most Muslims don’t know – and what much of the rest of the world does not fully understand or appreciate – is that the agenda for the mass media (television, newspapers and such) is itself set by a host of very sharp political, business and financial operatives around the world.
These individuals – representing a wide range of organizations, institutions and governments that employ them – are some of the world’s best minds and most skilled and highly trained practitioners of propaganda and public relations, which are the arts and sciences of mixing truth with falsehood, as the Qur’an puts it, and making the world believe, and often act on, whatever they set their minds to.
Muslims, often, for whatever reasons, pick up these handouts from these unknown sources, often without giving them a second look, or asking any meaningful questions about them, and run after them with a degree of faithfulness that even the best-trained dogs will have difficulty matching.
Unless, of course, they do this with full knowledge of what they are doing and why, which again is a possibility that must be raised and thoroughly debated.
In that event, their purpose will be distracting and diverting Muslims from their real goals, purposes and priorities in life and putting them on the path of chasing their own tails until Kingdom Come.
It is not heresy to raise these questions or to demand answers for them. It is every human being’s elementary civic duty.
And for Muslims it is a Fard or Farz – an unavoidable and inescapable obligation.
Beyond that, it is the sign of one’s Iman and it is Islam at its best.
No, I am not running out of things to say. But I must end here, but not without raising another question: Is this particular conference or seminar simply another attempt on the part of some enterprising Muslims to make some money?
If that is all it is, then, maybe it is not the most terrible thing to be happening. Except for all the damage that it may do by focusing the attention of the Muslims – for, most of these confabulations prey on Muslims and their reach among non-Muslims is often severely constrained – and the attention of the world – on often irrelevant or trivial distractions, to the detriment of much more important and urgent issues that Muslims – and the world – must be discussing.
END
