Imam Rashied Omar
The Role of Religion in Public Life
Outspoken scholar Rashied Omar raises some very challenging questions about our fixed views of religious extremists and their criticisms of postmodern culture. He points us to begin to deal with the difficult but perhaps singularly important issue of spawning intra-religious dialog between moderates and extremists within the same faith.
"Look, religion has many, many problems. It has contributed towards conflict but so too has secular modernity and post enlightenment. It’s not been a panacea to all of our problems."
Biography
Imam Rashied Omar is an unusual progressive Muslim. A voice for reform within his religion, he is outspoken and innovative and has committed his life to update his religion for contemporary times. Omar, now 49, attended both a madrasseh (Islamic High School) as well as a secular school in his native South Africa. As a youth, he protested actively against apartheid and was jailed for his views. As he recounts, “My struggle has been how to build a bridge between my faith commitment and my participation in protest against racism and apartheid, which I believed is evil.” In the mid-eighties, Omar traveled to Sudan to see how Muslims were dealing with politics and religion and felt the move to the right and the extremist interpretation of Islamic law was hardly a workable solution. He became an imam in Cape Town and began to work for what he felt was an integrated politics, one that worked from a deeper spiritual ethic, in his case, from the heart of Islam. He has used the platform of the mosque to highlight important social issues, being among the first imams to invite an HIV positive individual to speak to his congregants to build awareness, compassion, and response to the HIV-AIDs pandemic overtaking South Africa.
Imam Rashied Omar is an unusual progressive Muslim. A voice for reform within his religion, he is outspoken and innovative and has committed his life to update his religion for contemporary times. Omar, now 49, attended both a madrasseh (Islamic High School) as well as a secular school in his native South Africa. As a youth, he protested actively against apartheid and was jailed for his views. As he recounts, “My struggle has been how to build a bridge between my faith commitment and my participation in protest against racism and apartheid, which I believed is evil.” In the mid-eighties, Omar traveled to Sudan to see how Muslims were dealing with politics and religion and felt the move to the right and the extremist interpretation of Islamic law was hardly a workable solution. He became an imam in Cape Town and began to work for what he felt was an integrated politics, one that worked from a deeper spiritual ethic, in his case, from the heart of Islam. He has used the platform of the mosque to highlight important social issues, being among the first imams to invite an HIV positive individual to speak to his congregants to build awareness, compassion, and response to the HIV-AIDs pandemic overtaking South Africa.