fatman17
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Away from the madressah
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Taj M Khattak
In the movie The Book of Eli, Eli ( Denzel Washington) is charged by Providence to take a westward journey to deliver the very last copy of the King James Bible after an apocalyptic event that has left the world faithless and lawless. En route, he stumbles into Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who is in search of the same book and he hinges all his dreams of rebuilding and expanding his fiefdom on that possession.
At one stage, Carnegie exhorts his henchmen: "This is not an ordinary book. It is a weapon. With this I shall control the minds of an entire population and all their actions." Substitute the word Quran for the book and one gets the drift of where the extremists are taking this country.
The Holy Quran is a book of divine guidance and deliverance for humanity for all times to come. But for it to be used as a weapon by some in order to control the minds of a section of population to incite violence for their self-serving ends is an evil deed committed against God and the Holy Book.
Islam was spread in this part of the world by Sufis and saints through the immensely beautiful message of universal beneficence and enlightenment, and for centuries, the Quran primarily remained a radiant source of that light and wisdom.
But as the society and intellectuals vacated space to let clerics monopolise interpretation of Quranic injunctions and dominate performance of routine religious rituals, some misguided elements in robes began to see the Holy Quran as a weapon to control mass psyche.
With time, the madressahs, otherwise excellent models of social welfare and benevolence for the less privileged at the level of the local mosque, began to undergo a scary transformation. Today, it sends a chill down ones spine to see young children rote-learning the Quran in madressahs. Their tender minds cannot even remotely comprehend its meaning, let alone grasp the finer nuances of Islamic teachings in such matters of fundamental and profound importance as, say, tolerance. Devoid of basic scientific education, they remain extremely prone to brainwashing and readily available to answer higher calls as perceived by their mentors.
The ugliest manifestation of this was witnessed recently when nearly a hundred innocent people from the Ahmedia community were killed for holding different beliefs.
Every madressah student is not a terrorist but every terrorist or suicide bomber has been a madressah student or at least visited a madressah. We may have come across other variants of this painful and uncomfortable formulation and even contested it, but it certainly is true in this case.
Nawaz Sharif echoed the sentiments of many by calling the members of the Ahmedia community our brothers and sisters.
It is generally believed that it was under Liaquat Ali Khans watch that the progressive outlook of the state suffered a setback, when he succumbed to religious pressures and introduced the Objectives Resolution in 1949.
This may be an unfair conclusion as the disease had been just beneath the surface for years before the Partition. It was just that until then the brainwashed had not been brainwashed into turning their bodies into weapons and becoming so deft in the use of automatic weapons that it was as if the weapons were limbs of their bodies.
Consider this: Sir Syed Ahmed Khans liberal Islamic thought, as reflected in his 19th century Social Reformer and numerous other publications, sparkled in a few academic highlands but didnt create any significant impact in the vastly stretched lowlands of illiterate and semi-literates where the local mosques prayer leader regulated daily lives and held complete sway over the minds and actions of its inhabitants.
Allama Iqbals six lectures on the reconstruction of Islamic thoughts, which would effectively have taken away the interpretation of Sharia from the bigoted to the intellectual religious scholar, caused a kind of backlash and we are all well aware of the reaction.
Many references are made to the Quaid-e-Azams Aug 11, 1947, speech, without it being realised that by then too much water had flown down the proverbial bridge and the Quaid may only have been trying vainly to light the fire of secular enlightenment in a pile of wood too soggy with obscurantist thought to catch fire.
If there was any doubt, the evidence was provided by the chants of "Pakistan ka matlab kya, la ilah ha ilillah" (Pakistans raisin detre is that there is no God except Allah) in an increasing number of public meetings as the Pakistan Movement peaked from 1940 to 1947. There is nothing wrong with the slogan, per se, except that we didnt have to wear religion on our sleeves and kill innocent people in its name.
It is therefore not surprising that the Quaids speech quickly found its way into the archives rather than becoming the substance of the Friday sermon in every mosque across the land soon after independence. This would truly have been a living homage by a grateful nation to its founder; far better than his gleaming white marble mausoleum in Karachi.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto may only have exacerbated the situation in a futile effort at political longevity when he had the Ahmedia community declared a minority, at a time when the tide had clearly ebbed too far. Zia need not be glorified with a mention for his disservices. The religious rightists had smelled blood; shaking them off the scent at that stage was too late.
Let us acknowledge that our religion has been acquired by extremists groups for use as a weapon of death and destructions. Whenever I see a madressah on the roadside, I am reminded of a flight with a delegation aboard an Iranian navy aircraft from Chahbahar to Tehran decades ago. Sailors being sailors, we were soon endeared to the cockpit crew. During the landing, the pilot overflew a renowned seminary and remarked: "Sir, this is our mullah factory, but thank God we have only one."
At the time, we laughed at this remark, but little did we realise that, in time, our own country, with unregulated, unchecked and unsupervised madressahs spread across its length and breath, would be a spawning a whole industry in comparison.
Let us defend the dignity of the Holy Quran. It was revealed as a book to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) for the salvation and guidance of mankind; not as a political weapon to incite violence.
As said the Chinese say, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Lets take that first one.
The write is a retired vice admiral and former vice chief of the naval staff. Email: tajkhattak@ymail.com
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Taj M Khattak
In the movie The Book of Eli, Eli ( Denzel Washington) is charged by Providence to take a westward journey to deliver the very last copy of the King James Bible after an apocalyptic event that has left the world faithless and lawless. En route, he stumbles into Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who is in search of the same book and he hinges all his dreams of rebuilding and expanding his fiefdom on that possession.
At one stage, Carnegie exhorts his henchmen: "This is not an ordinary book. It is a weapon. With this I shall control the minds of an entire population and all their actions." Substitute the word Quran for the book and one gets the drift of where the extremists are taking this country.
The Holy Quran is a book of divine guidance and deliverance for humanity for all times to come. But for it to be used as a weapon by some in order to control the minds of a section of population to incite violence for their self-serving ends is an evil deed committed against God and the Holy Book.
Islam was spread in this part of the world by Sufis and saints through the immensely beautiful message of universal beneficence and enlightenment, and for centuries, the Quran primarily remained a radiant source of that light and wisdom.
But as the society and intellectuals vacated space to let clerics monopolise interpretation of Quranic injunctions and dominate performance of routine religious rituals, some misguided elements in robes began to see the Holy Quran as a weapon to control mass psyche.
With time, the madressahs, otherwise excellent models of social welfare and benevolence for the less privileged at the level of the local mosque, began to undergo a scary transformation. Today, it sends a chill down ones spine to see young children rote-learning the Quran in madressahs. Their tender minds cannot even remotely comprehend its meaning, let alone grasp the finer nuances of Islamic teachings in such matters of fundamental and profound importance as, say, tolerance. Devoid of basic scientific education, they remain extremely prone to brainwashing and readily available to answer higher calls as perceived by their mentors.
The ugliest manifestation of this was witnessed recently when nearly a hundred innocent people from the Ahmedia community were killed for holding different beliefs.
Every madressah student is not a terrorist but every terrorist or suicide bomber has been a madressah student or at least visited a madressah. We may have come across other variants of this painful and uncomfortable formulation and even contested it, but it certainly is true in this case.
Nawaz Sharif echoed the sentiments of many by calling the members of the Ahmedia community our brothers and sisters.
It is generally believed that it was under Liaquat Ali Khans watch that the progressive outlook of the state suffered a setback, when he succumbed to religious pressures and introduced the Objectives Resolution in 1949.
This may be an unfair conclusion as the disease had been just beneath the surface for years before the Partition. It was just that until then the brainwashed had not been brainwashed into turning their bodies into weapons and becoming so deft in the use of automatic weapons that it was as if the weapons were limbs of their bodies.
Consider this: Sir Syed Ahmed Khans liberal Islamic thought, as reflected in his 19th century Social Reformer and numerous other publications, sparkled in a few academic highlands but didnt create any significant impact in the vastly stretched lowlands of illiterate and semi-literates where the local mosques prayer leader regulated daily lives and held complete sway over the minds and actions of its inhabitants.
Allama Iqbals six lectures on the reconstruction of Islamic thoughts, which would effectively have taken away the interpretation of Sharia from the bigoted to the intellectual religious scholar, caused a kind of backlash and we are all well aware of the reaction.
Many references are made to the Quaid-e-Azams Aug 11, 1947, speech, without it being realised that by then too much water had flown down the proverbial bridge and the Quaid may only have been trying vainly to light the fire of secular enlightenment in a pile of wood too soggy with obscurantist thought to catch fire.
If there was any doubt, the evidence was provided by the chants of "Pakistan ka matlab kya, la ilah ha ilillah" (Pakistans raisin detre is that there is no God except Allah) in an increasing number of public meetings as the Pakistan Movement peaked from 1940 to 1947. There is nothing wrong with the slogan, per se, except that we didnt have to wear religion on our sleeves and kill innocent people in its name.
It is therefore not surprising that the Quaids speech quickly found its way into the archives rather than becoming the substance of the Friday sermon in every mosque across the land soon after independence. This would truly have been a living homage by a grateful nation to its founder; far better than his gleaming white marble mausoleum in Karachi.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto may only have exacerbated the situation in a futile effort at political longevity when he had the Ahmedia community declared a minority, at a time when the tide had clearly ebbed too far. Zia need not be glorified with a mention for his disservices. The religious rightists had smelled blood; shaking them off the scent at that stage was too late.
Let us acknowledge that our religion has been acquired by extremists groups for use as a weapon of death and destructions. Whenever I see a madressah on the roadside, I am reminded of a flight with a delegation aboard an Iranian navy aircraft from Chahbahar to Tehran decades ago. Sailors being sailors, we were soon endeared to the cockpit crew. During the landing, the pilot overflew a renowned seminary and remarked: "Sir, this is our mullah factory, but thank God we have only one."
At the time, we laughed at this remark, but little did we realise that, in time, our own country, with unregulated, unchecked and unsupervised madressahs spread across its length and breath, would be a spawning a whole industry in comparison.
Let us defend the dignity of the Holy Quran. It was revealed as a book to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) for the salvation and guidance of mankind; not as a political weapon to incite violence.
As said the Chinese say, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Lets take that first one.
The write is a retired vice admiral and former vice chief of the naval staff. Email: tajkhattak@ymail.com
