Ideal Versus Practical

to avoid religious disputes and to conduct the political and economic affairs of a country on a collective basis. This secularism was actually extremely beneficial for religion and its followers. It gave people the possibility, in both Muslim-majority and Muslimminority countries equally, to engage in positive religious activities. It provided them the opportunity to organise places of worship and centres for religious instruction, to set up educational institutions, to invite people to God, and so on. All such fields were completely open for the followers of Islam to engage in positive works. Availing of this opportunity, they could have engaged in positively serving God. But modern-day Muslim leaders, gauging secularism on the basis of an ideal that they had in their minds, remained inimical to it. Had they instead gauged secularism on the basis of practical reality, they might have considered it as a blessing from God and availed of it as a great opportunity. Branding secularism as an ‘irreligious’, ‘anti-religious’, and ‘devilish’ system and waging war against it proved to be completely unrealistic. This was against the very system of Nature itself. It was a totally impractical programme of trying to live life on the basis of an ideal in a world that runs on the basis of practical realities. That is why it naturally had to fail. And IDEAL VERSUS PRACTICAL