Most of us like to express ourselves or like to politically pose as Liberal, but are we REALLY Liberal? Are we just trying to impress people around us or avoid any confrontation by saying, "I'm liberal"? Before I further delve into this matter one must truly examine the definition of 'Liberal' according to World Dictionary:
1. Tolerant of other people or their views.
2. Relating to or having social and political views that favour progress and reform.
3. Giving and generous in temperament or behaviour.
4. Relating to or having policies or views individual freedom.

Now that we established the true meaning of Liberal minded or Liberalism, but 'Us' the liberals tend to act quite the opposite. We automatically jump down the throat of any right winger or conservative when we don't agree with them or sometimes become a hard critic of their views and lash out at them. But that makes us sound like we're leftist – not Liberal minded and definitely not tolerable to others views... just as the rightist would react towards the Leftist. Sometimes I witness people that claim to be 'Liberal' in facebook, but get irritated by any posting of a right wing or conservative minded person, often leading to friend deletion.

As I am a person of Logic and Mathematics; I have to see this in terms of Logic. And who better to help me on that issue than the 10th century Muslim Mathematician/logician Al-Farabi (who was known in the West as Alpharabius) from his Hypothetical Syllogism logical theory. He discussed in the topics of future contingents, the number and relation of the categories, the relation between logic and grammar and non-Aristotelian forms of inference. Al-Farabi categorized logic into two separate groups, the 1st two statements being "idea of conditional relationship" and the 3rd statement being "proof". So, this is what it would look like if I were to write an example of Hypothetical Syllogism in terms of 'Liberalism':

If I'm not open-minded, then I'm not tolerable to others views. (Statement 1 idea of condition)
If I'm not tolerable to others views, then I cannot be liberal. (Statement 2 idea of condition)
Therefore, if I'm not open-minded, then I cannot be liberal. (Proof)

Hypothetical syllogism is one of the proof rules in classical logic that is chiefly used in today's computer science programming. So if I were to write it in Algorithm form to insert that logical statement in a computer programming or in the form of if-else code, then I would write it in mathematical programming term by declaring them as variables when:

P = I'm not open minded
Q = i'm not tolerable to other views
R = I cannot be liberal

If P → Q.
If Q → R.
____________________
Therefore P → R.

Now that I've established both from Logical and Mathematical point of view the basis of Liberalism, one obviously can see the Western world domination is strictly divided between the Left and Right - it's no longer political ideologies or views anymore.


Although I do agree religious differences should not be tolerated, it should be ACCEPTED. But political beliefs should be tolerated and look beyond to build a better democratic society. Our current society is sucked into left and right parties and neither of them doing anything to help the country or world economy. It's just creating more frictions and wasting our valuable time, and 'we' the citizen of the world are becoming the slaughtered lamb. Perhaps now is the time for us to TRULY be liberal minded people. So, instead of attacking either parties or their supporters, we should look beyond to save our society and form an independent liberal party that only interested in saving the world and its species and mankind; where all ideas are acceptable and not be judged by its affiliation to either right and left party's views and worth considering seeing if they are applicable to build a stable future.

©Words - Shahriar Islam/ ZANI Media