“You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State” - Jinnah
Islamic Failure
Pervez Hoodbhoy
If the world is to be spared what future historians might call the “century of terror,” we will have to chart a course between
For nearly four months now, leaders of the Muslim community in the
These two assertions are simply untrue. First, Islam-like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or any other religion-is not about peace. Nor is it about war. Every religion is about absolute belief in its own superiority and the divine right to impose its version of truth upon others. In medieval times, the crusades and the jihads were soaked in blood. Today, there are Christian fundamentalists who attack abortion clinics in the US and kill doctors; Muslim fundamentalists who wage their sectarian wars against each other; Jewish settlers who, holding the Old Testament in one hand and Uzis in the other, burn olive orchards and drive Palestinians off their ancestral land; and Hindus in India, who demolish mosques and burn down churches.
The second assertion is even further off the mark. Even if Islam had, in some metaphorical sense, been hijacked, that event did not occur three months ago. It was well over seven centuries ago that Islam suffered a serious trauma, the effects of which refuse to go away.
Where do Muslims stand today? Note that I do not ask about Islam; Islam is an abstraction. Maulana Abdus Sattar Edhi, Pakistan’s pre-eminent social worker, and the Taleban’s Mohammad Omar are both followers of Islam, but the former is overdue for a Nobel Peace Prize, while the latter is an ignorant, psychotic fiend. The Palestinian writer, Edward Said, among others, has insistently pointed out that Islam holds very different meanings for different people. Within my own family, hugely different kinds of Islam are practised. The religion is as heterogeneous as those who believe and follow it. There is no “true Islam.”
Today, Muslims number one billion. Of the 48 countries with a full or near Muslim majority, none has yet evolved a stable, democratic political system. In fact, all Muslim countries are dominated by self-serving corrupt elites who cynically advance their personal interests and steal resources from their people. None of these countries has a viable educational system or a university of international stature.
Reason, too, has been waylaid. You will seldom see a Muslim name as you flip through scientific journals and, if you do, the chances are that this person lives in the west. There are a few exceptions: Pakistani Abdus Salam, together with Americans Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979. I got to know Salam reasonably well; we even wrote a book preface together. He was a remarkable man, terribly in love with his country and his religion. Yet he died deeply unhappy, scorned by
Although genuine scientific achievement is rare in the contemporary Muslim world, pseudo-science is in generous supply. A former chairman of my physics department in
A more public example: One of the two Pakistani nuclear engineers who was recently arrested on suspicion of passing nuclear secrets to the Taleban had earlier proposed to solve
Today’s sorry situation contrasts starkly with the Islam of yesterday. Between the 9th and 13th centuries- the golden age of Islam-the only people doing decent work in science, philosophy or medicine were Muslims. Muslims not only preserved ancient learning, they also made substantial innovations. The loss of this tradition has proved tragic for Muslim peoples.
Science flourished in the golden age of Islam because of a strong rationalist and liberal tradition, sustained by a group of Muslim thinkers known as the Mutazilites. But in the 12th century, Muslim orthodoxy reawakened, spearheaded by the Arab cleric, Imam Al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali championed revelation over reason, predestination over free will. He damned mathematics as being against Islam, an intoxicant of the mind that weakened faith.
Caught in the grip of orthodoxy, Islam choked. No longer would Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars gather and work together in the royal courts. It was the end of tolerance, intellect and science in the Muslim world. The last great Muslim thinker, Abd-al Rahman Ibn Khaldun, belonged to the 14th century.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world moved on. The Renaissance brought an explosion of scientific inquiry in the west. This owed much to translations of Greek works carried out by Arabs and other Muslim contributions, but they were to matter little. Mercantile capitalism and technological progress drove western countries-in ways that were often brutal and at times genocidal-rapidly to colonise the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco. It soon became clear, at least to some of the Muslim elites, that they were paying a heavy price for not possessing the analytical tools of modern science and the social and political values of modern culture-the real source of power of their colonisers.
Despite widespread resistance from the orthodox, the logic of modernity found 19th-century Muslim adherents. Some seized on the modern idea of the nation state. But remember that not a single Muslim nationalist leader of the 20th century was a fundamentalist.
Muslim and Arab nationalism, part of a larger anti-colonial nationalist current across the third world, included the desire to control and use national resources for domestic benefit. The conflict with western greed was inevitable. The imperial interests of Britain, and later the US, came into conflict with independent nationalism. Anyone willing to collaborate was preferred, even the ultra-conservative Islamic regime of Saudi Arabia. In 1953, Mohammed Mosaddeq of Iran was overthrown in a CIA coup, replaced by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Britain targeted Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Indonesia’s Sukarno was replaced by Suharto, after a bloody coup that left hundreds of thousands dead.
Pressed from outside, corrupt and incompetent from within, secular Muslim governments proved unable to defend national interests or deliver social justice. They began to frustrate democracy to preserve their positions of power and privilege. These failures left a vacuum that Islamic religious movements grew to fill-in Iran, Pakistan and Sudan, to name a few.
This tide in the Muslim world combined with a ruthless pursuit of advantage by the US in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. With Pakistan’s Moh-ammed Zia ul-Haq as America’s foremost ally, the CIA openly recruited holy warriors from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Algeria. Radical Islam went into overdrive as its superpower ally and mentor funnelled support to the mujahedin. Ronald Reagan f�ted them on the White House lawn.
The rest is familiar: after the Soviet Union collapsed, the US walked away from Afghanistan. The Taleban emerged; Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida made Afghanistan their base.
What should thoughtful people infer from this whole narrative? For Muslims, it is time to stop wallowing in self-pity: Muslims are not helpless victims of conspiracies hatched by an all-powerful, malicious west. The fact is that the decline of Islamic greatness took place long before the age of mercantile imperialism. The causes were essentially internal. Therefore Muslims must be introspective and ask what went wrong.
Muslims must recognise that their societies are far larger, more diverse and complex than the small homogeneous tribal society in Arabia, 1400 years ago, from which their religion springs. It is therefore time to renounce the idea that Islam can survive and prosper only in an Islamic state run according to sharia, or Islamic law. Muslims need a secular and democratic state that respects religious freedom and human dignity and is founded on the principle that power belongs to the people. This means confronting and rejecting the claim by orthodox Islamic scholars that, in an Islamic state, sovereignty belongs to the vice-regents of Allah, or Islamic jurists, not to the people.
People like bin Laden have no answer and can offer no alternative. To glorify their terrorism is a hideous mistake. The unremitting slaughter of Shiites, Christians and Ahmadis in their places of worship in Pakistan, and of other minorities in other Muslim countries, shows that terrorism is not about the revolt of the dispossessed, as it is often claimed.
The US, too, must confront some bitter truths. The messages of George Bush and Tony Blair fall flat, while those of bin Laden, whether he lives or dies, resonate strongly across the Muslim world. Bin Laden’s religious extremism turns off many Muslims, but they find his political message easy to relate to: the US must stop helping Israel in dispossessing the Palestinians and stop propping up corrupt and despotic regimes across the world just because they serve US interests.
Americans will also have to recognise the fact that their triumphalism and disdain for international law has created enemies everywhere, not just among Muslims. They must become less arrogant and more like the other peoples of the world.
Our collective survival lies in recognising that religion is not the solution; neither is nationalism. We have but one choice: the path of secular humanism, based upon the principles of logic and reason. This alone offers the hope of providing everybody on this globe with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Rupturing Heaven
by Nadeem Farooq Paracha
Today societies in Islamic countries plagued by terrorism are almost completely incapable of raising a united front against the extremists
ln 1979, an alarming incident occurred in the Islamic world, which most history books across the Muslim realm have almost completely expunged from its pages.
However, today the details of this violent incident are slowly making their way out thanks to various Muslim and Western historians who believe that within this incident lies the chance to study the roots of modern-day Islamic extremism.
On November 20, 1979, a group of armed Saudi fanatics entered the premises of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The group was being led by a man called Juheyman bin Muhammad. With him as his second-in-command was one Muhammad Abdullah.
The group was made up of about a hundred men, most of them Saudis, but also comprising Egyptians, Yemenis, Syrians, Sudanese, Pakistanis, Libyans and at least two African-American converts.
All of them were followers of Abdul Azizi bin Baaz who was Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti.
Bazz had been highly critical of late King Faisal’s moderate reforms that had seen the setting up of the Kingdom’s first television station. Faisal had also given conditional permission to the Kingdom’s women to work in offices.
Bazz was also incensed by the presence of Western workers in Saudi Arabia who had been hired by the government to manage the large amounts of oil wealth the Kingdom had accumulated.
In his fiery Friday sermons, Bazz attacked the monarchy for moving away from the path set by the monarchy’s predecessors, especially King Al-Saud (d 1953) — even though it was under Saud that the discovery of the vast amounts of oil in Saudi Arabia was made with the help of British and American firms.
But Saud knew that to retain power he had to remain on the right side of the powerful official clerics. That’s why, though flushed with oil money, he was painfully slow to initiate reform. Instead he kept the Kingdom running on the ultraconservative principles of puritanical Islam. No wonder, to Juheyman and his men they were doing exactly what they were taught at Saudi schools and universities: Purge ‘false Muslims’ and ‘infidels’ from Islam.
To counter the rise of secular Arab Nationalism and Arab Socialism in the 1960s initiated by regimes in Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Syria (and later), Libya, King Saud’s successor, King Faisal, started implementing some soft social reforms.
The Kingdom’s clerics accused Faisal of turning Saudi Arabia into a ‘liberal’ country, though almost all of these clerics were on the payroll and perks of the monarchy and pragmatically tolerated.
The policy of toleration of the clerics continued even after Faisal was assassinated by a member of his own family (in 1975) who too was a Baaz admirer.
Baaz’s blazing sermons eventually gave birth to a group of young fundamentalists quoting an ambiguous hadith, claiming that Muhammad Abdullah was the Mehdi. The hadith also mentioned that the clash be- tween Mehdi’s followers and ‘infidels’ will take place in the Grand Mosque of Mecca.
The mosque was taken while pilgrims were present. Some were allowed to leave, while a number of others were tak- en hostage.
Mayhem ensued. For days the militants fought bloody gun battles with Saudi forces.
Misled by rumours that attributed the Mosque take-over to an ‘American- Zionist conspiracy’, mobs in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Libya attacked and burned down American embassies in their respective countries.
The first days of the battle saw the militants gaining an upper hand. Scores of Saudi soldiers were slaughtered. Watching the situation spiralling out of control, Saudi regime contemplated using outside help.
Since no non-Muslim is allowed to enter the Grand Mosque, the Saudi regime pondered using Pakistani and Jordanian commandos.
But the Saudis eventually called in French commandos and asked them to supply training (just outside
Logically the Saudi regime was expected to launch a crackdown on fundamentalists after the tragedy, but it did what most Muslim regimes usually do in the face of a movement or insurgency by fundamentalists: It rolled back whatever little social reforms it had initiated and became even more subservient to the puritanical clergy.
And here is where most Muslim regimes and societies have faltered. Faced with pressure and violence from Islamists, many regimes in the Islamic world have historically tried to work out their survival by giving into a number of regressive and myopic demands of the Islamists.
The social fall-out of this trend has been devastating. Today societies in Islamic countries plagued by terrorism are almost completely incapable of raising a united front against the extremists.
The pathological politics of compromise indulged in with the Islamists by previous and present governments have pushed these societies either in a state of stunted fear, or worse, have left them reeling outside the spheres of reason and logic. This trend has eventually hurled them into the intellectual black hole where twisted religious exegeses and xenophobic exhibition of ‘patriotism’ and faith abound, shoving these societies further down the cyclic spiral of violence and denial and creating havens for faithbased ogres in crucial corners of culture and politics.
Indoctrinating Young Minds
The curricula being taught at both private and government schools are riddled with striking biases and omissions
By Ali Shan Azhar
The significance of meaningful school education cannot be overemphasised. Today, all nations — rich and poor alike — pay homage to the right of and access to the benefits of basic school education. In fact, school education is considered indispensable, both for the individual and the society in contemporary civilisation. Let us remind ourselves that the word ‘education’ is derived from a Latin word that means ‘to draw out’. The development or the drawing out of mental faculties is the very essence of education. The objective of school education, then, ought to be the training of the latent powers of observation, reasoning and thought in children; and, thence, awakening their intelligence. Also, school education is the pillar on which rests the whole edifice of learning / education systems. “School houses are the republican line of fortifications,” declared Horace Mann, the famous American educator.
Are the schools in Pakistan doing their job? Are they playing their part in nation-building and in creating an aware citizenry? Is the school education, as it stands today, sufficiently capable to tap the sources of the creative energies of the children and to adequately channelise them? To find satisfactory answers to these critical queries, it is imperative to have a survey of what is actually a part of the curricula at the school level in Pakistan at present. Careful research reveals certain broad trends of the curricula / textbooks being taught at various levels in both government and private schools. These trends merit particular emphasis to evaluate the quality of education being imparted.
Islamisation of textbooks
The teaching of Islamiat in preference to pure Ethics at all levels is in itself an indicator of the desire to ingrain a distinct identity among the Muslim children in Pakistan. Our Islamiat textbooks bring out the similarities in the beliefs, modes of worship, and social and practical life of the Muslims; and declare that the Muslims dwelling in every part of the world constitute a single brotherhood. Even more interesting is the claim made in a number of textbooks that all the non-Muslims (by default?) constitute a single nation. This stress on Islamic identity is carried over to the curricula for Social Studies and Urdu language, as right from the first grade one comes across lessons about Islamic rituals and beliefs in the textbooks of these subjects.
The Islamisation of textbooks picks up as the child moves to higher grades, with essays on religious personalities frequently adorning the curriculum. Inevitably, this quest for the Muslim identity has led to the Islamisation of the curricula for Social Studies and Urdu language at all levels and in all schools, barring the elite English-medium educational institutions. Some textbooks of these subjects are so highly representative of Islamic personalities and concepts that their first half is hardly indistinguishable from an Islamiat textbook. The overwhelming religious content inevitably phases out a number of essential topics of Social Studies that would have done much more to shape the character and socio-political / socio-cultural perceptions of the children. For instance, useful topics pertaining to geography, history, culture, economy and society do not find enough space in most Social / Pakistan Studies textbooks.
Adding insult to injury is the sad realisation that the damage is happily inflicted merely to accommodate religious lessons that already stand repeated ad nauseam in the Islamiat and Urdu language textbooks. The results of Urdu language instruction are not admirable either. The emphasis of school textbooks ought to be on enabling understanding and analysis at a specific level of vocabulary. However, in many cases, it appears that language has been rendered subservient to religious instruction. As a result, the children are missing out on true language training — as evident from their poor verbal skills despite studying Urdu language throughout their 10 years at school. Many educationists ascribe the ill to the ‘pushing out’ of literary pieces of prose and verse to accommodate religious essays, which do much lesser in terms of improving language skills.
Pakistan as an Islamic state
The curricula for Social / Pakistan Studies attempt to borrow directly from the founder of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in a bid to prove that the country was originally meant to be an Islamic state: “Wherever you are and whoever you are, you are a Muslim first and last. This land does not belong to Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans or Bengalis.” So the Quaid wanted the inhabitants of Pakistan to be Muslims and also that they gave up provincialism on this basis (and not because they were Pakistanis?). The Quaid’s assertion that “Everyone of us should think, feel and act as a Pakistani; and we should be proud of being Pakistani alone” only finds a place in the O’ level textbooks exclusive to the elite English medium schools.
A number of textbooks, however, do find room for another extremely ambiguous quote from the Quaid: “We are Muslims and have faith in one God, one Prophet (PBUH) and one book; so it is binding on us that we should be one as a nation also.” It is obvious that our policy-makers, in order to promote a theocratic set of mind, do not hesitate to quote out of context even the very founder of the country. Many textbooks claim that Pakistan is the “fort of Islam” and all efforts should be aimed at making it an “Islamic welfare state”. The deliberate and blatant promotion of a very questionable logic as the very raison d’etre of Pakistan’s existence certainly does very little to promote responsible citizenship among the future generations, while simultaneously distorting their vision of historical events / personalities for the rest of their lives.
Such attempts at Islamising Social Studies have efficiently deprived the subject of its utility, which can be of invaluable significance in explaining to the children the world around them in a simple, interesting and classified manner. It is a discipline that can provide them a peep into the world affairs; as well as the political, social and economic structure of their native country. All this facilitates the development of children into adults who can think for themselves and who possess the power of critical analysis. The heavy doses of religion and manufactured history, however, transform the very framework of Social Studies from a modern, liberal and progressive one to one with strict taboos and unquestionable assertions. In total opposition to what true education envisages, school textbooks appear to be encouraging tendencies among the children to be dismissive of highly debatable issues.
Relations with non-Muslims
Accepting the debatable premise of Pakistan being an Islamic state does not in any way condone or connote that non-Muslims are not entitled to find a peaceful abode in Pakistan — it is not too much to expect that school textbooks communicate to the young minds in no uncertain terms the relevant Islamic teachings regarding relations with the non-Muslims. Interestingly, however, only the Islamiat textbooks exclusive to the elite English medium schools seem to convey the true tenor of the Islamic teachings regarding relations with the non-Muslims — for example, they cite incidents of the hospitality that the Holy Prophet (PBUH) extended to the non-Muslims; or highlight the fact that he ensured complete security of life, property and practice of religion to them in the Islamic state of Medina.
The non-Muslims were called zimmies (protected people), because they lived in peace and tranquility under the protection of the Islamic state. In fact, in safeguarding the rights of non-Muslims, an Islamic state has gone to such extremes as to give them the liberty of maintaining even those practices that are entirely opposed to the teachings of Islam. For example, the consumption of alcohol is forbidden for the Muslims in Pakistan; yet the government itself issues permits to the non-Muslim to use alcohol. These are facts and religious teachings that have been omitted in their entirety from all Islamiat curricula, except those taught at most of the elite English medium schools. Some Islamiat textbooks go the extent of labelling all the non-Muslims as kafirs (infidels). Also, the Quaid’s opposition to religious intolerance is almost entirely overlooked by all the school curricula in Pakistan.
National Integration
The task of providing a national identity to the Pakistanis is mystified by the alternate pursuit of the curricula for a concocted Muslim identity and Islamic recognition. The least that the curricula must do in these circumstances, in order to stimulate the process of national integration, is to encourage the people of all the four provinces to better understand each other. To what extent do the curricula accomplish this task? The Punjab Textbook Board’s Urdu language textbook for the grade 8 delves only into the Pakistani literature produced in Punjabi language. Similarly, the Social Studies textbook for the grade 4 totally ignores the geography and the history of all provinces except Punjab. So, it is only in the grade 9 that the children at government schools learn about the culture of the country in a comprehensive manner and an organised form. In addition to culture, most textbooks also miss out on the geography and the economy of the country.
The luxury of comprehending the entity that Pakistan is seems to be reserved exclusively for those fortunate enough to be educated at the elite English medium schools. The O’ level textbooks, for instance, elaborate in detail the geography and the economy of the entire country — its climate, agriculture, industry, means of communication, natural resources, occupations, etc. There is also a chapter entitled The struggle for a cultural identity, which incorporates the history and growth of the various regional languages of Pakistan as well its national language Urdu. Similarly, the Urdu language and Social Studies textbooks being taught at the elite English medium schools describe the life and works of famous personalities from other provinces. For instance, essays on Pushto poet Rehman Baba and Sindhi poet Abdul Majid are included in the curriculum being taught at the elite English medium schools of Punjab. The curricula in these schools also adequately cover the culture, lifestyle and famous places of all the provinces.
Democratic Values
Democratic values and systems find almost no mention in the textbooks and in the curricula. A quote from Quaid-e-Azam can, however, be found in the Punjab Textbook Board’s Pakistan Studies textbook for the grade 10: “I believe that the final shape of the constitution will be democratic and based on the fundamental Islamic principles.” Otherwise, even the slightest mention of the meaning and the functioning of a parliamentary democratic system is rare, even in the case of the curricula being taught at the elite English medium schools. So is the case with the description of a federal system of government and its prerequisites.
Similarly, the concept of universal human rights is yet to find a place in our school curricula; and, as a corollary, the class perspectives and socio-political demands pertaining to basic human rights have also not been found worthy of mention. What is noticeable, instead, is degradation of the democracy and eulogising of the military — an institution widely acknowledged to have repeatedly sabotaged the democratic process in Pakistan on one pretext or the other. The Urdu language textbooks are immensely helping the Social / Pakistan Studies textbooks in this task. A particularly favourite discussion topic of the Urdu language textbooks for the grades 7 and 8 at the government schools is the martyrs of the wars with India and those bestowed with military honours like the Nishan-e-Haider.
To play down the repeated military interventions in the history of Pakistan, all textbooks overlook the latest episodes of the national history. The worst being the Punjab / NWFP Textbook Board’s Pakistan Studies textbook for the grade 10, which totally overlooks the national history beyond the promulgation of the 1973 Constitution. What type of aware citizenship can be promoted by virtually hiding the better part of the country’s history? And how is it possible to prepare the youth for the challenges of the modern age without providing them with the barest idea of either the concept of democracy or the need for a democratic political setup?
Perception of the West
No Social / Pakistan Studies curricula being taught at the government schools makes any attempt to study the international geography / history, except for that of the Muslim countries. This is a strange grouping to study given that the only commonality is religion, which has nothing to do with geography and climate. The underlying message (explicitly stated at places) is that the Islamic countries (somehow) constitute a single block with common interests and hence the need for cooperation. Compare it with the curricula being taught at the elite English medium schools, most of which are teaching both medieval and modern world history, as well as international geography. For a vast majority of the Pakistani children, however, the sole introduction to the West remains the alleged ‘evil alliance’ between the Hindus and the English to jeopardise the existence of a newly created Pakistan. The theme of Hindus as ‘the enemies of Islam’ recurs in both Social Studies and Urdu language curricula.
Recap
Summing up, it is evident that the curricula being taught at both English medium (mostly private) and Urdu medium schools (mostly government) are riddled with striking biases and omissions. Sparing the extremely elite, the school education in
It is fair to assume that before the students reach the college level they have been substantially deprived of the abilities to think and observe. Their mental growth stands stunted, thus undermining their capacity to acquire higher education and be able to truly benefit from it. The didactic approach towards history and social studies at school level is certain to hamper the vision of children. Everything around the children has been branded as so sacred that there is no room left for an objective analysis directed at some sort of variation / improvement. If the curricula could at least encourage the children to think for themselves, the intolerance and obscurantism in the Pakistani society might see a decline.
Presently, the textbooks are cultivating a mental outlook among children that has its basis in the reinforcement of certain stereotypes and creating fear. The children are encouraged to ponder in terms of absolutes — they conceive every scenario as a picture of absolute good or else as a caricature of absolute evil. Their mindset fails to appreciate that differences — whether they pertain to beliefs, culture or ideology — are natural and often historical. They, instead, have fantasies of the eternal struggle between their favoured creed and the ‘enemies’, who are always busy conspiring and colluding to stall the ultimate triumph of the ‘truth’. I am tempted to conclude with an observation by eminent historian K K Aziz: “The failure of democracy, the long spells of military dictatorship, corruption, moral laxity, deterioration in character, decline of moral values, sense of irresponsibility, inefficiency, cynicism, indifference to what the future holds for us — all this is the bitter harvest from the seeds we use in the cultivation of the minds of the young. As you sow, so shall you reap!”
(Email: goldenstar2005@hotmail.com)
History as We Know It
An overhaul of the entire curriculum is a prerequisite for any positive change in the Pakistani psyche. Unfortunately, it is reluctantly being done under US pressure, which is leading to misperceptions of its own
“Was Aurangzeb a brutal emperor?” a fairly educated journalist asked me, after watching the play The Trial of Dara Shikoh. The question was revealing because it shows that the teaching of history leaves with our students concocted fiction rather than fact-based records of the present and past.
The play The Trial of Dara Shikoh written by Akbar S Ahmad and directed by Manjula Kumar had been staged in many locations in the last few weeks. As expected, most of the caste comprised Indian artists except the usual suspects, Noor Naghmi and his son Sultan Naghmi.
Despite much professional criticism of many aspects of the play, the general audience appreciated it very much. The play was also successful in spurring pertinent questions in the minds of the viewers like my journalist friend.
Aurangzeb imprisoned his father, murdered three of his brothers and most of their children. He dumped most of the Indian Shias in Kashmir and, once while he was riding his elephant, crushed a Hindu mob because they were protesting against high taxes. Given these facts, it was up to my friend, I told him, to decide whether Aurangzeb was brutal or not.
“How about the stated history that Aurangzeb used to make his living by producing Qur’anic calligraphy and sewing topis (hats)?” he asked. I remember such a characterisation of Aurangzeb in school textbooks. And if I had not kept educating myself beyond school textbooks that would be the Aurangzeb I would have in my mind.
Elaborating my point I told my friend that Aurangzeb spent most of his time fighting and administering wars and that his favourite wife — mother of his youngest son, Kam Bakhash — was a Hindu woman. Aurangzeb used to vacation in Kashmir often, along with a large harem, according to some historical accounts.
I do not know when he found time to produce calligraphy or sew topis on a scale that could meet the expenses of his palace which was housing hundreds of Mughal princes and princesses besides a large army of concubines and servants/slaves.
Intellectual Talibinisation was initiated from very early on after the creation of Pakistan. A mythical history of Muslims was introduced in textbooks where every ruler, invader and plunderer, was shown in the role of protector and religious crusader.
Starting from Mahmud Ghaznavi, the conqueror of the Somnath Temple, to Nadir and Ahmad Shah Abdali, every invader was presented as the great saviour of Indian Muslims. Three generations of Pakistanis have been indoctrinated with this concocted history to create Islamic chauvinism and to belittle people of other religions.
No wonder most Pakistanis developed a sense of superiority resulting in unnecessary war-mongering. The military elite has been clinging to this false sense of superiority in making wars.
According to Air Marshal Noor Khan, Ayub Khan sent paratroopers in Kashmir because he really believed that one Muslim soldier can overwhelm dozens of infidels. Not learning any lesson from three lost wars, the elite continued naming the missiles after Mahmud Ghaznavi, Muhammad Ghauri, Nadir Shah and sundry.
The fact of the matter is that most of the revered Muslim invaders plundered India to loot. Ghaznavi attacked Somnath because it had the largest gold deposits in India. Hindu Rajas themselves used to attack their religious temples for gold. Hindu mercenaries were part of Ghaznavi’s invading force according to some historians. They joined hand with the Afghan invaders for their share in the booty.
Likewise when Nadir Shah is idealised as a great soldier of Islam no one mentions that he ordered a three-day massacre in Delhi because the locals killed one of his soldiers. The butchering was indiscriminate and ironically, more than half of those murdered were Muslims.
Ahmad Shah Abdali’s story is no different. He invaded India many times, looted the riches and went back to Afghanistan. On one of his trip, he appointed a Hindu as the governor of Lahore. He had no ‘Islamic ideals’ like our fictional history textbooks would have us believe.
Even Mughal emperor Baber did not conquer Hindus but a Muslim dynasty of
But history textbooks used in
On the contrary, the real Muslim intellectuals, the Sufis, who spread Islam in
An overhaul of the entire curriculum is a prerequisite for any positive change in the Pakistani psyche. Unfortunately, it is reluctantly being done under US pressure, which is leading to misperceptions of its own. But it has to be done and someone has to do it.
Postscript: Hindu extremists, led by BJP, are following the Pakistani model by substituting history with mythological texts to whip up Hindu chauvinism. This reminds one of the Punjabi proverb that it is more common to pick up your neighbour’s bad habits rather than his good behaviour.
The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com
Curriculum of Hate
Afghanistan, Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Syria, UAE, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Comoros, Iraq, Maldives, Djibouti, Benin, Brunei, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Mozambique, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Suriname, Togo, Guyana and Côte d’Ivoire are all Muslim-majority states. Can you name the one — and the only — Muslim-majority state where Muslims blew up the Danish embassy killing at least eight other Muslims?
Why, why Pakistan? I don’t have all the answers, and I am sure no one does. But, please have a look at what the Punjab Textbook Board is teaching eleven-year old Pakistanis. Here is a paragraph from the Social Studies textbook for Class 7, page 43 (written by Professor Dr M H Bokhari and Syed Hassan Tahir):
“European nations have been working during the past three centuries, through conspiracies on naked aggression to subjugate the countries of the Muslim world.”
Here is a paragraph that was not part of the previous year’s Pakistan Studies but has been inserted in the textbook for the current academic year. This text was written by Muhammad Hussain Chaudhry, Ali Iqtadar Mirza, Sheikh Anees, Rai Faiz Ahmad Kharal, Syed Abbas Haidar and Dr Qais. This is for students of Class 9 and appears on page 3:
“The economic system of (the) west was creating unsolvable problems and had failed to do justice with the people.”
Thirteen- and fourteen-year-old students of Pakistan Studies are being taught that
“one of the reasons of the downfall of the Muslims in the sub-continent was the lack of the spirit of jihad (Class 9-10; Pakistan Studies, page 7).”
Imagine; thirteen-year-old Pakistanis are being taught that
“In Islam jihad is very important…..The person who offers his life never dies….All the prayers nurture one’s passion of jihad (Class 9-10; Pakistan Studies, page 10).”
Look at what Dr Sultan Khan, Muhammad Farooq Malik, Rai Faiz Ahmad Kharal, Muhammad Hussain Chaudhry and Khadim Ali Khan are teaching sixteen-year-old Pakistanis:
“Always keep oneself ready to sacrifice one’s life and property is jihad…..The basic purpose of all submissions and jihad is to keep oneself follower of the good will of Allah Almighty (Class 12; Pakistan Studies, page 4).”
At the tender age of 10, Pakistani students are discovering what the British had done to them. “The British sent rare books from these libraries to England. Thus the British ruined the Muslim schools. They did not want that Islam should spread (Class 6; Social Studies, page 99).” This text was scripted and translated by Professor Mian Muhammed Aslam, Professor Muhammed Farooq Malik and Qazi Sajjad Ahmed.
Look at the remarkable breakthrough achieved by of our learned Professor Dr M H Bokhari and Syed Hassan Tahir. In a total of 36 words, the duo has managed to capture the cause of the crusades:
“History has no parallel to the extremely kind treatment of the Christians by the Muslims. Still the Christian kingdoms of Europe were constantly trying to gain control of Jerusalem. This was the cause of the crusades (Class 7; Social Studies, page 25).”
It seems as if our ministry of education is grooming our children for death rather than for life. The examples quoted above are all out of our federal ministry of education’s curriculum designed by the curriculum wing. I agree that nine-, ten- and eleven-year-old students after reading these textbooks are not going to go and blow themselves up but the federal ministry of education is certainly creating a thoroughly militarized society. In that sense, our curriculum appears to have been deliberately designed to facilitate the usurpation of genuine educational space by forces of hate, violence and that of extremism. What we have is a primary and secondary school environment consciously manufactured to nurture terror, promote prejudice and breed extremism.
Our ‘Curriculum of hate’ is, hopefully, not producing suicide bombers but it is definitely breeding closet bombers who wholeheartedly support the ideals of suicide bombers being produced elsewhere. In essence, the two — suicide bombers and closet bombers — have a strange symbiotic relationship whereby the parasite cannot survive without a receptive host. And, the receptive host is all around us — courtesy the ministry of education, government of
The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com
The Hijackers of Islam
April 12, 2009 by Awais
The great irony of the predicament in which the world’s Muslims find themselves today is that those who speak in their name are, in the words of the late Eqbal Ahmed, an “armed minority.” The face of Islam that the west sees is not its true face. The fierce hate-laden invective that this minority and its implacable followers inflict on the world’s “infidels”, and those whom Osama bin Laden calls the “crusaders”, is foreign both to Islam’s spirit and the vast majority of its followers around the world. A small number of militants has hijacked Islam and pressed it into the service of a convoluted worldview.
It is this version of militant Islam that is projected on the world’s television screens and splashed across its newspapers. It is no wonder then that to the ordinary person in a western country, this brand of Islam appears as the only Islam there is.
When you point this out to an average American, Englishman or Italian, he feels justified in asking what prevents the majority of Muslims who are tolerant of other faiths from speaking up. Why have they abandoned the stage in favor of a militant and reactionary minority of religious zealots who not only advocate but practice violence, they ask. And that is a fair question. Increasingly, Muslims living in the west, no less than those living here, have come to realize that it is time they stood up and spoke with courage and conviction. If they allow themselves to remain confined to the corner to which the zealots have driven them, they will do irreparable damage to their religion and themselves.
Starting with Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic “revolution” in Iran, the journey of militant Islam has taken us through the slaughterhouses of the FIS in Algeria and the medieval tyranny of Taliban Afghanistan. With the blowing up of the US embassies in East Africa and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the clock can be said to have come full circle. Because of a small number of misguided, ignorant men and their distorted understanding of Islam, which has a timeless message of peace and love, today the world’s one billion Muslims find themselves the object of hostility and distrust. I doubt if all the ill-wishers, enemies and detractors of Islam, both past and present, could have hit upon a better plan to isolate Muslims and turn the rest of the world against them than what Osama bin Laden, and those sharing his morbid thinking, have managed to do. It is time for the true and reasonable voice of the Muslims to be raised and heard.
There are enough Muslim scholars working and writing both here and in the west who have begun to do just that. One such person is our own Dr Riffat Hasan from Lahore who has been teaching at the University of Kentucky for several years. Recently, she seems to have had a run in with Dr Farhat Hashmi, she of the richly-endowed Al-Huda Centres and Asma Jehangir. What angered Dr Hashmi and those who share her retrogressive thinking was Riffat Hasan’s fresh and rational approach to Islam and its holy book.
In a recent interview, Riffat Hasan made a number of telling points on the present situation in which the Muslims of the world find themselves. She said the Muslim reluctance to start a debate had to do with the intellectual decadence that had set in over the years. The tradition of intellectual critique of Islam’s first 300 years had been lost. She said the middle of the Islamic community was occupied by a silent majority, adding, “This is where the moderates are; this is where the progressives are, and the place from where the answers are going to eventually come. Right now, this silent majority is in a state of paralysis and dormancy.”
Riffat Hasan’s position on the Holy Quran is worthy of note and answers many questions that people are often afraid to ask. She said her position on the Holy Quran was that it is a sacred text of divine origin but being a text it is made up of words and each word has a root and multiple meanings. “Theoretically it means that everything in the Quran is capable of being interpreted in many ways.” This, she explained, “involves a methodology called hermeneutics. In order to know the meaning of a word, we have to see what it meant in 7th century Hijaz, not what it means today.” She spoke of an “ethical criterion” which means that no Quranic text can be used as a means to perpetuate injustice in any way, since the God of Islam and the Holy Quran is a just God.
Riffat Hasan had some enlightening comments on the recent “epidemic” spread of the practice or fashion of women donning hijab. She said, “The word hijab means curtain. The law of hijab laid down in Surah Nur applies equally to men and women. ‘Lower your gaze and guard your modesty.’ The Quran puts a lot of emphasis on dignity, elevating human beings, calling them the children of Adam and putting them above the rest of Allah’s creations. (The Quranic injunction) is not restricted to the dress code, it includes the way you talk, walk and how you conduct yourself in public space. The message is to be mindful of your human dignity.”
Riffat Hasan explained that a major part of the Quran refers to the conflicts of that time, which are basically references and not principles. “They have to be read in a certain way and are meant for our instruction,” she added. One particular verse which has been put to increasing use recently to paint the Muslims as intolerant of the followers of other religions was explained thus by Dr Hasan, “Where it says in the Quran ‘Take not the unbelievers as your friends,’ today this has been turned into a principle. It is not a principle and was revealed in a certain context. How can such a principle be for all times? In several verses, Allah has referred to the Ahlal Kitab - people of the Book - and given them a lot of importance. People who pick Quranic verses out of context have twisted the verse. In any case, Jews and Christians are not unbelievers.” She went on to add that the Quranic reference to ‘ kafirin’ and ‘ munafiqin’ did not translate into Jews and Christians, a translation that has been superimposed upon these two words by the ignorant and the bigoted.
One can only wish more power to Riffat Hasan’s pen because hers is the kind of voice that the west, no less than Muslim peoples, needs to hear.
Dr. Riffat Hassan who is highlighted in the article is a member of the Editorial Board of THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND ABUSE. She is the founder of THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR THE RIGHTS OF FEMALE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE IN
Source:
This article appeared on Feb.14, 2003, in The Friday Times,
Roots of Religious Right
Eqbal AhmadTHEY belong to differing, often contrasting religious systems - Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yet their ideas and behaviour patterns bear remarkable similarities. In India they have burned down churches and destroyed a historic mosque. In Palestine they describe themselves as ‘pioneers’, desecrate mosques and churches, and with state support dispossess the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the ancient land. In Algeria they are engaged in savage warfare with a praetorian government. In Serbia, they attempted genocide and ran rape camps. In Pakistan, they have hit Christians, Ahmedis and Shi’a Muslims and also each other.
They wage holy wars, and commit atrocities sanctimoniously, yet nothing is truly sacred to them. They spill blood in bazaars, in homes and in courts, mosques and churches. They believe themselves to be God’s warriors, above man-made laws and the judgment of mankind.
They are the so-called ‘fundamentalists’, an epithet reserved by the western media for the Muslim variety who are invariably referred to as ‘Islamic fundamentalists’. Others of the ilk are assigned more neutral nouns. The Jewish zealots in Palestine are called ’settlers’ and, occasionally, ‘extremists’. The Hindu militant is described as ‘nationalist’, and the Christian is labelled ‘right-wing’ or ‘messianic’. The bias in the use of language obscures an important reality: They are reflections of a common problem, with shared roots and similar patterns of expression. Here we briefly review first the environment which gives birth to these political-religious movements, then the commonality of their style and outlook.
The mistakenly called ‘fundamentalists’ are a modern phenomenon, a response to the crises of modernity and identity. Modernity is a historical process. It refers to the development of societies from one mode of production to another, in our age from an agrarian/pastoral mode to the capitalist/industrial mode of production. The shift from one to another mode of production invariably brings revolutionary changes in society. It compels a new logic of social and economic life, threatens inherited styles of life, and forces transformations in the relationship of land, labour and capital. As such, it requires adaptations to new ways of being and doing, and demands drastic changes in human values and in the relations of sexes, classes, individuals, families and communities. It transforms the co-relation and arrangement of living spaces, requires change in how the workplace is organized, how new skills are gathered and distributed, and how people are governed.
When this process of change sets in, older values and ways of life become outdated and dysfunctional much faster than newer, more appropriate values and ways of life strike roots. The resulting social and cultural mutations are experienced by people both as threat and loss. For millennia, humanity had experienced this unsettling process, for example, when it moved from the stone age to the age of iron, or when it discovered fire and shifted from hunting and gathering to agriculture. But never had this process been more intense and more revolutionary than it became with the rise of capitalism and the industrial mode of production. This latter development has been more revolutionary in its impact on societies than any other event in history.
The industrial mode threatened nearly all values and institutions by which people had lived in the agrarian order. It induced large-scale migrations from villages to cities, shifted the locus of labour from farm to factory and the unit of production from the family/community to the individual, forced increasing numbers of women into the labour market, shifted the focus of social regulation from customs to laws, re-ordered the structure of governance from the empire to the nation, obliterated distances to permit the penetration of markets, and transformed the focus of economic life from subsistence toward production en masse and consumerism.
A transformation so systemic was bound to threaten old ways of life. It destroyed the autonomy of rural life lived for millennia, shrank the distances that had separated communities from each other, forced diverse peoples and individuals to live in urban proximity and compete with each other, undermined the structures and values of patriarchy as it had prevailed for centuries, and threw millions of people into the uncertain world of transition between tradition and modernity. In brief, the phenomenon puts into question, and increasingly renders dysfunctional, traditional values and ways of life. Yet, cultures tend to change more slowly than economic and political realities. All societies caught in this process undergo a period of painful passage. How peacefully and democratically a society makes this journey depends on its historical circumstances, the engagement of its intelligentsia, the outlook of its leaders and governments, and the ideological choices they make.
The capitalist and industrial revolution started from Europe. European responses to its dislocating effects offer meaningful variations which scholars have not yet examined with sufficient rigour. The western and non-western experiences are, nevertheless, comparable in that they reveal that when faced with a crisis so systemic, people have tended to respond in four ways. We might call these restorationist, reformist, existential, and revolutionary responses. The restorationist wants to return somehow to an old way of life, re-impose the laws or customs that were, recapture lost virtues, rehabilitate old certainties, and restore what he believes to have been the golden past - Hindutva and Ramraj, Eretz Israel, Nizam-e-Mustafa. Restorationism invariably entails rejection of the Other - e.g. Muslim, Arab, Hindu, Christian, Ahmadi - and what are construed to be the Other’s ways which can range from woman’s dress and man’s beard to song, dance and such symbols of modern life as the television and radio.
The restorationist ideology and programme can range from relatively moderate to totally extremist. Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee offers a ‘moderate’ example of Hindu restorationism, Mr Bal Thackeray is an extremist, and Lal Krishna Advani falls somewhere in between. Similarly, the Jamaat-I-Islami’s Amir Qazi Hussain Ahmed may be viewed as a moderate Islamist while Mulla Omar, the Taliban leader, occupies the extreme end.
The reformists are of modernist disposition, men and women who care deeply about preserving the best and most meaningful in their religious tradition while adapting them to the requirements of modern life. The obverse is also true: they seek to integrate modern forms and values into inherited cultures and beliefs. An early reformist in India was Raja Ram Mohan Roy, founder of the Brahmo Samaj movement. The first great Indian Muslim reformist was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, and the last to be so regarded is Mohammed Iqbal whose “Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam” is a quintessential example of reformism in modern Islam. In the Arab world, the al-Manar group led by Mufti Mohammed Abduh, and in the Maghreb Shaykh Ben Badis, Tahir al-Haddad and Abdel Aziz Taalbi were influential reformists. Like the restorationist, the reformist trend emerged as a response to the perceived decline of Muslim power and encounter with the colonizing western powers. From the second half of the 19th century it gained hegemony in the Muslim world, but stagnated in the post-colonial period.
Reformism suffered an initial setback in the Ottoman empire where successive attempts at reform failed, mainly because they were feebly attempted. The Turks’ revolutionary turn was premised on the failure of Ottoman reforms. Mustapha Kemal’s was the first revolutionary response in the Muslim world. He abolished the Caliphate, established an uncompromisingly secular republic, suppressed many religious institutions, proscribed the veil, prohibited polygamy, and enacted secular laws regulating property rights and women’s rights on the basis of equality. No other Muslim country has so far equalled Ataturk’s radical break from tradition and from the association of Islam with state power. Yet, in the 1980s and 1990s Turkey did not escape the resurgence of Islamism.
In Iran, the ulema legitimized the constitution of 1906 of which the promise and premises were secular. Shaykh Mohammed Husayn Naini (1860-1936) delineated the doctrinal justification for the ulema’s support for constitutional government, a position later affirmed by the Ayatullah-e- Uzma Husayn Burudjirdi (1875-1962) who was the sole marja of his time and remains a figure of great authority among contemporary Shi’a clerics. But the coup d’etat led first by Reza Shah Pahlevi and another engineered by the American CIA in 1953 put an end to what might have been the most successful experiment in democratic reformism in the Muslim world. Under partial reformist influence, the nationalist regimes in a number of states - Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Indonesia, and Malaysia among others - instituted secular constitutions without effecting a radical break from the tradition of associating religion and power. Many of these secular authoritarian regimes are now being challenged by Islamist movements.
With
The dominant feature of the post-colonial period has been the existential style of deploying religion whenever it suits the political convenience of those in power, and of ignoring the challenge of defining the relationship of religion and politics when governments and the ruling elites feel secure and contented. This posture came under assault with the rise of Islamic militancy in the eighties and nineties, a period that witnessed accelerated globalization of the world economy. The Islamists were further propelled by the Iranian revolution (February 1979), and more importantly by the Afghan jihad which, thanks to the generosity of the
The resurgence of right-wing religious movements in the eighties and nineties was world-wide. They have a particularly violent role in
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