Excerpt from Tariq Fateh's book "Chasing The Mirage : Illusion of Islamic state"
I AM AN INDIAN BORN IN PAKISTAN; a Punjabi born in Islam; an immigrant in Canada with a Muslim consciousness, grounded in a Marxist
youth. I am one of Salman Rushdie’s many Midnight’s Children: we were snatched from the cradle of a great civilization and made permanent refugees,
sent in search of an oasis that turned out to be a mirage. I am in pain, a living witness to how dreams of hope and enlightenment can be turned into a nightmare of despair and failure. Promises made to the children of my generation that were never meant to be kept. Today, the result is a Muslim society lost in the sands of Sinai with no Moses to lead us out, held hostage by hateful pretenders of piety. Our problems are further compounded by a collective denial of the fact that the pain we suffer is caused mostly by self inflicted wounds, and is not entirely the result of some Zionist conspiracy hatched with the West.
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In this book I attempt to draw a distinction between Islamists and Muslims. What Islamists seek and what Muslims desire are two separate
objectives, sometimes overlapping, but clearly distinct. While the former seek an “Islamic State,” the latter merely desires a “state of Islam.” One state requires a theocracy, the other a state of spirituality.
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Chasing a Mirage is a cry from my heart to my co-religionists, my Muslim sisters and brothers. It is a plea to them to remove their blindfolds, once and
for all; to free themselves from the shackles of conformity that have stunted their development for so long. In this book, I try to demonstrate that from the earliest annals of Islamic history, there have been two streams of Islamic practice, both running concurrently and parallel, but in opposite directions, leading to confl icting outcomes. From the moment the Prophet of Islam died in 632 CE, some Muslims took the path of strengthening the state of Islam, while others embarked on the establishment of the Islamic State.
source:http://cdn.criticalppp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Fatah-2008-Chasing-a-Mirage-The-book.pdf