the Message Continues ... 3/14
Article 1 I Article 2 I Article 3 I Article 4 I Article 5 I Article 6 I Article 7
Article 8 I Article 9 I Article 10 I Article 11 I Article 12
Analyse
this
By Irfan Husain
courtesy: The Dawn internet edition (20 July 2002)
Whenever Muslims look at their economic, political and cultural decline, they
are prone to see the hidden hand of western imperialists and Zionist
expansionists. This is easier than looking at our own failings when seeking
answers.
But recently, a group of Arab intellectuals have put their own world under an
unsparing microscope and have raised some deeply troubling issues to explain why
the Arab world is where it is. Many of the answers to these questions apply
equally to Pakistan, so their findings contained in "Arab Human Development
Report 2002", published recently by the United Nations Development
Programmer, deserves serious study by all those who would like to do something
to change the status quo, rather than just wing about it.
Consider, for instance, the fact that the combined exports of the entire Arab
world minus oil revenues are less than tiny Finland's. The combined GDP of the
countries comprising the Arab League is 531 billion dollars or less than
Spain's. Despite their oil wealth, Arab countries have not fared well
economically: over the last two decades, income per capita has grown at 0.5 per
cent per year. 12 million people, or 15 per cent of the working population, are
unemployed.
But more than economics, it is the prevailing attitudes and the quality of
governance that are holding back much of the Muslim world. According to the
conclusion reached by the authors of the report (and quoted by the Economist),
"The barrier to better Arab performance is not a lack of resources ... but
the lamentable shortage of three essentials: freedom, knowledge and
womanpower."
In the first respect, Pakistan is better placed than most Arab states as we do
have sporadic, albeit often unreliable, recourse to the ballot. True, the army
has generally interfered in the democratic process by subverting the popular
mandate in one way or another, but despite all its failings, the demand for
democracy in Pakistan has continued to reassert itself time after time.
However, in the two other aspects of Muslim underdevelopment, we are worse off
than our Arab brethren: not only is our knowledge base very shaky, but our
treatment of women is disgraceful by any standards. With a claimed literacy rate
of around 40 per cent, Pakistan is near the bottom of the educational tables.
But in fact, functional literacy is far less: hardly a fraction of our graduates
(1.32 per cent of the population) can string together a coherent sentence in any
known language. This makes the new condition that only graduates can contest the
elections in October all the more puzzling since there is an underlying
assumption that graduation means education.
With all the noise we make about Urdu being the national language, our
efforts at translating foreign books are pitiful. To put things in a larger
context, the authors of the report inform us: "... in the 1,000 years since
the reign of Caliph Mamoun, ... the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain
translates in one year". In his ground-breaking book "Muslims and
Science", Dr Pervez Hoodhboy rubs our noses further in the dust when he
tells us that the collective output of scientific papers written in the entire
Muslim world each year is a small fraction of Israel's.
Perhaps it is this lack of creativity and intellectual stagnation that today
defines the Muslim world. When we can hound and harass Professor Abdus Salam,
the only Muslim to have won the Nobel Prize in physics, it is clear that our
only interest in knowledge is the weapons, the luxury cars and the amenities of
life it can produce for us. Curiosity and the desire to seek knowledge for its
own sake do not seem to motivate us: only 0.6 per cent of the Arab world uses
the Internet, and 1.2 per cent have computers. No doubt the statistics for
Pakistan are even more depressing.
But it is the treatment of our women that differentiates us from the rest of the
world. Quite apart from the sheer unfairness of sequestering half our
population, we have deprived ourselves of the creativity and productivity of
millions of Muslims simply because of their gender. Under the garb of 'modesty'
and 'protection', we have imprisoned women, making them serve life sentences
without any right to appeal.
And under the rubric of 'honor', we routinely subject them to vicious
punishments like gang rape, murder and chopping off their noses. The recent gang
rape of an 18-year old girl to avenge her brother's alleged amorous liaison,
sanctioned by the council of village elders, shows yet again how barbaric we
still are despite our nuclear status.
In the name of religion, we have made women second class citizens: in last
year's local body elections in many parts of the NWFP and Balochistan, women
were neither allowed to contest the polls nor even to vote by their husbands and
fathers. Their contribution on the farms and in the homes is un quantified and
unappreciated. The handful of women who have made it to the top have done
so by dint of hard work and talent, and have made it despite opposition at
every level.
There is a casual assumption of macho superiority in Muslim societies that is
supported by male-dictated social mores and religious dogma, although it has
rightfully been rejected elsewhere in the world. Empowering women means taking
power from men, and this is seldom achieved without a struggle.
Unfortunately, even our educated elites resist this transformation and as a
result, we remain backward and barbaric.
One of the major factors holding Muslim societies back is that we are taught
from an early age that truth should be sought in religious texts and not in
experience and abstract knowledge. According to a Syrian intellectual quoted by
the Economist: "The role of thought is to explain and transmit ... and not
to search and question." These attitudes had not hardened to their
present-day rigidity when Muslim scientists, philosophers and historians led the
world in virtually every area of knowledge. But at the start of the new
millennium, we have yet to emerge from our dark ages.
This debate between tradition and modernity is not just an intellectual one:
at stake is nothing less than the soul of the Islamic world. Population
trends project an ever-younger populace in most Muslim countries where
economic stagnation is not generating enough jobs to absorb them even when they
get a smattering of education. Frustrated and aimless, they are marginalized and
angry, willing recruits for any band of extremists who offer them a direction
and a purpose in life. If we are to emerge from our long torpor, we will need to
address the issues the authors of the UNDP report have raised.
© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2002
DISCLAIMER:
All material published by Al-Huda.com / And the Message Continues is the sole responsibility of its author's).
The opinions and/or assertions contained therein do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of this site,
nor of Al-Huda and its officers.
Website Designed and Maintained by Khatoons Inc. info@khatoons.com
Copyright © 2001 CompanyLongName / Last modified: January 19, 2019