Decolonizing Education

 

PROJECT: DECOLONIZING EDUCATION

 

                                                            Maryam Sakeenah

 

Over the years that I have studied and then taught the GCE/IGCSE syllabi in Pakistan, I have come to realize how some of the contents of the syllabi as well as the ideas, values, attitudes and approaches embedded in them- even the tools for interpretation evaluation- are an extension of the ‘Macaulay’ project which aimed to ‘create a  class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.”

 

Much of the content I teach is rooted in the neocolonialist / neoimperialist idea of the centrality and ascendancy of the Western civilization. It is quite glaringly obvious in the 'World History' syllabus I teach. Quite ironically, ‘World’ History is overwhelmingly the history of Europe and the US, with a passing mention of the ‘non West’ through a heavily tainted Eurocentric (or should I say Orientalist?) lens. While studying the impact of the First World War, the havoc it played in the Middle East, piecing out and redistributing Ottoman territory arbitrarily is glossed over, among so much else.

 

The Sociology syllabi trace the origin of the study of Society to the European Enlightenment, failing to even acknowledge what sociology owes to 'Umraniyat' of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah. All social themes are analyzed through the lens of Western philosophies of Structural Functionalism, Interpretivism, Marxism and Feminism. Students are expected to cite examples not from the societies around them, but from British society as that is the prime subject of the entire study. As a teacher I find it tragic that my students are to base their understanding of how society works in the structure, norms and trends belonging to British society primarily, and only secondarily their own- as a postscript to the course syllabus.

 

As a student and then a teacher of CIE Pakistan Studies History, I never knew there was such a thing as the Great Famine of Bengal which resulted due to exploitative economic policies of the British. I had no idea about the strategic destruction of the local cotton industry and its nightmarish impact on the economy and society, for British economic interests. I had no idea about the systematic degradation of the Madrassah as a casualty of Macaulay's grand colonial educational project... These ‘blind spots’ on history I harbor profoundly affect my understanding of my present social context. My understanding of my present will always be superficial and partial, always coming from a tainted lens.

 

 

It is true that this system provides students with skills to think critically, formulate opinions and construct arguments- and that at present this is quite plainly missing from our local educational systems. What is required therefore is to update our own syllabi and examination strategies in order to replace this system. Educationists in the country need to understand the need to decolonize education and initiate such a project.

 

The prevailing system also very discreetly establishes the primacy of the English language over and at the cost of the local and national languages. Students passing through the system therefore, adopt the language of the colonizer as their first language, and its baggage of values, ideas and attitudes alongwith it. The narrative that comes wrapped up in the language is absorbed uncritically as one’s own.

 

The profound disconnect that all this produces between the present generation and its roots is tragic and grave. It is a crisis of identity, a loss of a heritage... The rich legacy of Urdu literature gets shrouded in oblivion. The entire treasury of literature in local languages will soon be lost to our children- inaccessible, remote, unfamiliar, alienated.  

 

Generations of students have passed through and will continue to pass through this system... the consequences are enormous. The need to decolonize education and to decolonize our intellect is immense. We start by prioritizing communication and learning in our own language(s), as well as developing an affinity with locally produced content in local languages. This is especially important at the primary level as the ‘tabula rasa’ of the child’s mind uncritically accepts whatever is presented by a superior. Learning a foreign language as one’s first has been proven through research to be highly damaging to the child’s communication skills and sense of identity.

 

If this project to decolonize education is not taken up with urgency and seriousness, we will be doomed to watch our brightest minds turn into colonies of uncritically, unreflectingly borrowed ideas.

How Standardized Education Kills Diversity of Skills

KILLING HUMAN DIVERSITY

Maryam Sakeenah

It did not take me a long time as a school teacher to observe that the way we educate is fundamentally flawed. In my very first year as a teacher I was asked to take extra classes for a badly performing group of students. I was told that the objective was just to help them somehow secure a passing grade. The lessons left me drained out at the end of the day with a sense of frustration over the extremely slow progress, if at all, of the students. However, there was something else I figured out- each of these students classified as poor performers and persistent failures, had a gift of his own- one of them who had partial cerebral palsy was a brilliant calligrapher; others could draw extraordinary well, or do wonders in the sports field, while one other loved caring for animals. I realized the pointlessness of compelling these gifted children to do Math or English or History when academic pursuits were not their forte. But the tragedy was that the education system did not value what they possessed, and hence labeled them as failures for what they were not meant to do in the first place. I asked to meet the parents of these children, convincing each one of them that their children were gifted and talented in diverse skills which the parents must allow them to pursue. All of the parents scoffed at the notion, saying that whatever talent they had ‘will not get them anywhere in life’, and that they must, by any means, be forced to do well in the disciplines acknowledged by the education system.

Although I didn’t have much luck with helping these students recognize and explore their true talent owing to stiff resistance from school administrations and families, I learnt how the way we educate refuses to recognize natural human diversity and narrows down ability exclusively to academic disciplines. This is not only unjust and uninsightful, it is fundamentally perverse and limiting. It classifies human talents and abilities on a scale inconsistent with human nature,  that places academic intelligence, literacy and numeracy at the top. It is built on the fallacy that all human beings are meant to excel at reading, writing, calculating, memorizing and reproducing and those who do not, are of less ability and value.
Such a system oppresses those countless human beings that God has constructed more creatively- those who are more artistic or sporty or possess unconventional intelligence. The system discards them as worthless. There are so many real life horror stories of students giving up on themselves and developing low self esteem or other psychological problems because the school forced them to perform academically while what nature had intended for them was different. Their lack of academic interest and ability led to them being labeled as failures which in turn became a self-fulfilling prophecy as these individuals were consigned to the fringes of a system which mainstreams only a certain kind of intelligence. A simple analogy invoked in this context is quite striking… How would a fish feel about itself if it was judged for its ability to climb trees, when it was meant to swim? When we put the ability to climb trees as the only ability of worth, the birds that fly and the fish that swim and the plants that bear fruit are all trashed in one fell sweep. That is what we have been doing to millions of human beings for hundreds of years.

Not only does this stark reality we have lived with for so long need to be recognized, there needs to be a radical reformation of the way we educate. Human intelligence needs to be redefined to recognize innate diversity. It needs to accommodate and acknowledge and appreciate the many colours and shades that make up the spectrum of our humanity. Ken Robinson has done some great work to highlight the phenomenon of how schools kill creativity. In Europe and the United States, some work on revamping the system along these lines has begun, but in our part of the world we still have to recognize the problem. Our education should stop stifling human individuality and awarding success only to those who fulfill its narrow definition of ability. Education must recognize that academic ability is not the standard human trait we must pursue and develop in all human beings indiscriminately, and that success is attainable in ways other than academic achievement. The creative arts, physical education and manual labour all need to be given their due place and value not only as recognized fields of learning but also as well respected career paths. Vocational education must be given to those who are not academically oriented, and such an education should have as much prestige as a college education. We need to identify diverse talents in individuals and allow them to excel in those by not only providing opportunity but also recognition and value to non academic pursuits. Only this will help end the silent oppression that stifled natural human diversity since human beings invented standardized education.  

The Marketization of Education in Pakistan

THE BUSINESS EXECUTIVE AS EDUCATOR 

Maryam Sakeenah

The sleek car that zoomed past sported a sticker telling passers-by that the owner was a ‘proud parent’ of a child at a certain institution. The pride of course was for the fact that this institution was exclusive to the privileged elite on account of its appallingly high tuition fee. My initial reaction was openmouthed disbelief. Eventually it sank in… the reason for the parent’s pride was not the child’s achievement or act of merit, but the fact that they could pay that outrageously high fee for a select, exclusive education. The distasteful sticker was issued, of course, by the school itself. The particular school happens to be top-notch within a system that metes out education according to buying power. It consists of schools varying in standards of education and resources according to the tuition fee rates. Such a system helps to perpetuate a rigid social stratification based on class, utterly ruining any semblance of meritocracy within which an education system truly delivers, making social mobility possible.

This is marketized education at its worst; education reduced to a commodity. It defies the idea that education is a universal birthright to better the lives of all human beings, and is an affront to egalitarian social ideals. And yet this marketization of education in urban Pakistan has been subtly under way since years, and no one batted an eyelid. Its consequences which are only beginning to show up, are nightmarish, privileging the financial elite by education, enabling them to be at the helm of positions of power and influence in the bureaucracy and industry, media and education. Those denied the privilege for their financial inability are forever condemned to menial working class positions demanding clerical servility to perpetuate the system made by and for the financial elite.

This has largely been made possible through the rise of the business executive as educator and policymaker. Graduates in business, marketing and management run administrations of educational institutions, equipped with all the clever arts of moneymaking, profiteering, competing and selling. They have never stood on the giving end of a classroom, are completely ignorant of human psychology and educational philosophy, unaware of the nuances of the complex process of learning. Trained in the art of selling for profit, they lack the vision to educate for the sake of education. They educate for business, and so function as indispensable, core elements of the commercialized private schooling system.

The great irony is when this system places the average business graduate as educational administrator over the academic, making and dictating educational policy. Such policy then is driven primarily by the profit motive. In this commercialized milieu, the educator, teacher and giver of knowledge is a worker in the system serving a clientele that generates the money. Hence the client is cosseted to perfect satisfaction for his money, and the educator slavedriven to provide that to impossible perfection. Teachers in Pakistan’s private schools continue to be heavily overworked and perpetually underpaid.    

The subjugation of the academic to the professional businessman is at the core of the marketization of education. Business graduates trained to keep up the utilitarian-capitalist economy administer the system, making policy that utterly lacks any understanding of the functions and nature of education as well as any genuine concern for social uplift, human empowerment and liberation through education. In my experience as a teacher, I have come across among most urban English-medium private schools a systematic and deliberate trend discouraging value education and traditional disciplines like oriental languages or religious studies because they have little material worth in a cutthroat economy. Students graduate with the ruinous notion that a spattering of accented English gives them the right to social superiority and is enough to sweep anyone off their feet; or that a skill at gadgetry is of highest value in landing oneself a high paying job. Their years of education often fail to humanize, enlighten and enrich them with wisdom, compassion or humility even as they sport all the paraphernalia of wealth and good taste. They are perfectly finished products of the system- cogs in the machine, and yet unable to truly live the enervating yet edifying epic struggles of human life.

In the private education system, the business graduate not only takes the fattest cheque home, he helps to keep in place the system that created him and put him over the educator, visionary and academic. The human products of marketized education are a tawdry triumph of this system that privileges a particular social class over the rest.   

The Stasis of the Muslim Mind

THE STASIS OF THE MUSLIM MIND

Maryam Sakeenah

“Lost in the loneliness, we turn inwards- with a knife in our hands and a lump in our throats”, writes Muhammad Fadel describing the deep crisis in contemporary Muslim consciousness. The loss of the Khilafah has imbued Muslim sensibility with a deep and haunting nostalgia for a bygone glory. The direction of foreign policy taken by Western nations vis a vis the Muslim world has not helped assuage the raw sentiment, leaving Muslims to harbour the supposition that the ascendant West is locked in a crusade against the Muslim world in the throes of despondency imposed by a malevolent external enemy. The frustration this engenders often makes itself felt in spasmodic bouts of violence like the gasps of an etherized patient laid across on the table.

The experience of long-drawn colonial rule across Muslim lands intensified the nostalgic longing for a lost glory as well as the need to hold on ever more strongly and exclusively to religious fundamentals as a means of self-preservation and protection of religio-cultural identity. This exacerbated the disconnect between ‘deen’ and ‘dunya’ in Muslim consciousness in general and education in particular. Aurangzeb Haneef notes in his article, ‘Learning from the Past’, that one of the most important effects of European imperialism in Muslim society was that the pursuit of rational sciences (maqulat) was abandoned in favour of transmitted sciences (manqulat)in the spirit of preservation in an attempt to re-center and standardize the traditions of religious knowledge. Madrassas ceased to be the training grounds for the intellectual and cultural elite and increasingly came to be identified with religious education only, which was an aberration from the tradition.

The rising popularity of Salafism is a reactionary response out of a prevailing sense of defeatism, victimhood, vulnerability and insecurity over what is seen as the encroachment upon Muslim identity and culture by an ascendant Western civilization. The call for a puritanical ‘return to the sources’ down to the letter shunning the accretions of theology and jurisprudence over centuries is distressingly ahistorical, uncreative and mimetic. It refuses to recognize the need to creatively and rationally respond to the exigencies of the times. Ironically while it claims fidelity to authentic Muslim tradition, it actually betrays the essential dynamism of the same. This dynamism is the defining trait of Islamic jurisprudence which traditionally accorded space to diversity. Muslim jurists were remarkably tolerant of ‘ikhtilaf’(difference of opinion), and were adept at the ‘adab’ (etiquettes) of ikhtilaf. Towering jurists of the sunni school like Imam Abu Hanifa and Imam Malik discouraged blind following (taqleed) of their opinions, encouraging critical thinking and research.

These Muslim groups demonstrate all or most of the traits of fundamentalism, that is: ‘a sense of chosenness tied to the demonizing or damnation of all others who refuse to get behind the truth subscribed to by the subject himself.’ (Farid Esack) By refusing to defer to historical understandings of Islam in theology and law, these Muslim groups place themselves at the fringes of Islamic tradition they claim to be guardians and restorers of.

Due to a radical subjectivism that confers quasi-divine authority to a certain set of literalist opinions these innovation-resistant groups refuse to subject their opinions to rational inquiry. In so doing, they implicitly refuse to recognize intrinsic human diversity as well as the status of individuals as rational subjects imbued with the Divinely-bestowed gift of intellect and free will. “Unto every one of you have We appointed a [different] law and way of life. And if God had so willed, He could surely have made you all one single community: but [He willed it otherwise] in order to test you by means of what He has vouchsafed unto, you. Vie, then, with one another in doing good works! Unto God you all must return; and then He will make you truly understand all that on which you were wont to differ.” (5:48)

At a subconscious level, the deep realization of the untenability of opinions that refuse to defer to critical examination has resulted in an inward-looking stasis characterized by an uncompromising exclusivism and exceptionalism.

Muslim exceptionalism betrays the Quran’s universal embrace of humanity with its consistent appeal to mankind as the creation of God, a single family. ‘O men! Behold, We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is all knowing, all aware.” (49:13) The Quran attaches sanctity to all humankind when it narrates how God blew of His own spirit into the first created person. Muslim exclusivism refuses to recognize the fact that our well-being as a species on a finite planet is tied to the well-being of all others we share it with, and that in the face of this reality, all labels and artificial boundaries are secondary. It is only the extremely narrow-minded and short-sighted who would refuse to recognize the fact that our well being is inextricably tied to the well being of all others.

A further corollary of such exclusivism is the tendency to view ideas as mutually exclusive, with an either/or approach. The middle ground, the many grey areas of overlap are lost sight of. This generates a characteristic intellectual extremism that infects Muslims en masse. It is not understood that neither of the extremes is an acceptable alternative to the other, hence the world appears all black and white, like an arena for a clash of ideas. The ‘Us versus Them’ psyche translates into ‘Islam versus The West.’ This is dangerous as it understands both Islam and the West as monoliths and glosses over the many instances both historical and contemporary, of coexistence, intercultural exchange, common grounds and shared values. It denies the universality of commonly held values, viewing them as ‘Western’ or ‘Islamic.’ The actual confrontation as recognized by Islam, is between Haqq and Baatil (Truth versus Falsehood), and before deciding if anything that passes for Islam is the whole truth, we need to ask ‘whose Islam?’, given the fact that the Quran and sunnah are open to diverse readings and interpretations and the self-appointed spokespeople of Islam are as many as the possible interpretations. Nor is Falsehood equivalent to all that the West is about, given the fact that the military-industrial complex and the clique of influential policy-making elites are responsible for the highhandedness of foreign policy decisions and the injustices that have wreaked havoc and provoked backlash among Muslim populations.

Muslims often invoke the ideal of Islam comparing it to the reality of Western society which often betrays its own values such as freedom and liberty, to show the degeneracy of the latter as compared to the Divine system they have been denied- unmindful of the many ways Muslim societies consistently betray the values of Islam.  

The myth of ‘Islam versus the West’ also denies the collective heritage of Islamic and European civilizations and the instrumental role Islam had in making the Enlightenment possible. “Arab science altered medieval Christendom beyond recognition. For the first time in centuries, Europe’s eyes opened to the world around it- Arab science and philosophy helped rescue the Christian world from ignorance and made possible the very idea of the ‘West.’” (Jonathan Lyons, ‘House of Wisdom’) Aime Cesaire beautifully and powerfully reminds us of this collective human heritage and that attempts to claim a monopoly over the achievements of human civilization are a form of intellectual dishonesty, whether done by scholars in the West or the Muslim world. "But the work of man is only just beginning, and it remains to conquer all the violence entrenched in the recesses of our passion, for no race possesses the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of force. And there is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory." - Aimé Césaire 

In the same vein, there are other binaries like ‘Islam versus Democracy.’ In the recent Pakistan elections numerous religious groups propagated that casting a vote was an act of ‘kufr,’ because democracy is based on the sovereignty of the masses over the sovereignty of God. While the system of electoral politics in Western societies has elements that are incompatible with Islam, the values of democracy are universal and are part and parcel of Islamic governance. Following the majority opinion a standardized practice in Muslim tradition (‘Ijma’ has many forms, the last of which sanctions general voting by the public to settle questions that bear upon the interests of the general masses and can be put to a public vote). Moreover, respecting popular sentiment and being accountable to the public are fundamental Islamic political values. The procedural rules of electoral politics can and should be reformed to conform to Islamic standards and shari’ rulings made exclusively the job of a panel of qualified ulema, beyond the purview of general voting- and it no more is ‘an affront to God’s sovereignty.’ Numberless Islamic scholars have talked of the compatibility between democratic principles and Islamic politics. Sameen Sadaf notes the irony in ‘The Dynamism of Islam”: The alternative, they say, is ‘Khilafat’ (which in many ways is democratic in its ethos). However, since there is no comprehensive system and candidature for khilafat at the time, one can suppose that all we can do is wait for a savior while the forces of actual ‘Kufr’ take over and ruin us.” Pro-Sharia activists seem to assume that mainstreaming the Islamic way of life through dialogue and dawah can be discounted without any loss and they can march straight to an Islamic Khilafah state that will somehow miraculously tame the Muslim masses into believing slaves of God. 

The binary thinking pattern and exclusivism has made Muslim consciousness be preoccupied with narrow, parochial concerns considered ‘Islamic.’ It is forgotten that being slaves of Allah means being good human beings first and that as Muslims everything in the universe is our business. Zaid Hassan writes of the need to ‘reclaim our relationship to the whole’ in his wonderful article, ‘Notes towards an Incomplete Manifesto for Liberating the Muslim Mind.’ The growing distance between ‘deen’ and ‘dunya’ in Muslim consciousness has made Muslims unconcerned about aspects that belong to the secular domain as profane and unworthy. Hence there is an intellectual degeneracy, and a clear absence of contemporary Muslim discourse in science, philosophy and the humanities, a near-absence of Muslim contribution to research.  In the recent elections, Islamic parties in Pakistan exclusively talked of the need for a return to rule by Islam, invoking Shariah, the Islamic identity and ethos of Pakistan. Talking of issues that resonate with the masses like poverty or the energy crisis was considered redundant given their ‘Islamic’ credentials. The growing unpopularity of these parties and their less-than-expected performance comes as no surprise.  

This ghettoization of Muslim thought threatens to make us dwindle into a cult at the margins of civilization. Religious discourse that fails to take account of the modern mind and appeal to the youth with their voracity for rational argument cannot be shoved down people’s throats. It is condemned to survive as no more than a fringe-cult.  

Still more lamentable is the fact that Muslims are failing to realize the need to introspect in these critical times. Any manifestation of the deep crisis in Muslim consciousness is dismissed as ‘unrepresentative of Islam’ at best, and ‘propaganda against Islam’ at worst. Self-criticism is noble, highly needful and the essential trait of the faithful. Muslims have abandoned it altogether, and any voice helping us to examine ourselves critically or calling for a reform is disdainfully rejected with suspicion and sneering self-righteousness. The belief that terrorists or criminals or misogynists ‘use’ the name of Islam to justify their deeds is comforting but unhelpful because it does not recognize the fact that many interpretations of the Quran and sunnah actually give some grounds to sanction such acts and that therefore there is great responsibility on Muslim thinkers to expose and oppose the textual basis of such arguments.

The stasis of the Muslim mind is a daunting project before us. Muslim society is terribly fragmented and polarized between the extremes of the secular and the religious. So much of Muslim scholarship today is pitiably out of touch with the vicissitudes of contemporary society, rationally indefensible, in a language far removed from and inaccessible to the mass man and incognizant of the psychology of modernity and post-modernity. ‘Maqulat’ must be brought at par with the ‘Manqulat’ as central to a holistic Muslim education, precisely because that is how it had always been and was supposed to be before things went awry. The need today is for Muslim scholars to negotiate between entrenched extreme positions, address issues of the here and now in a language that appeals to the common man, and to appeal to modern sensibility in a manner that is faithful to the ethos of Islamic tradition. Such voices need to collate, organize and rise to a crescendo that can drown out the clamour of extremisms. It is a grand project and an urgent one, but cannot be begun until we first realize the need for such effort today and cease to live in denial of the terrible crisis that threatens to rob our faith of its very soul and reduce it to perpetual irrelevance.

Attack on Swat girl

A METHOD IN THE MADNESS?

Maryam Sakeenah

That attacking a child who expressed her will to educate herself and others like her is a crime most heinous is something every right-minded human being would assent to. There is, quite unsurprisingly therefore, an absolute consensus among Pakistanis and the rest of the world about the reprehensibility of the act_ and that certainly tells us our hearts are still in the right place. It is also a given that whoever is behind this attack is evil. 

Thinking thus is not leftist or rightist, or liberal or conservative or religious or secular. It is just common decency. 

But I must risk being controversial beyond the facile narrative of this episode. There are vital questions that need to be asked. For one, who would do this, and why really? I am told it is the thing called Taliban. But I must be cautious against unproven assumptions. Not because I am a Taliban sympathizer, but because I do not know enough to make that conclusion other than the fact that one Ihsanullah Ihsan claimed it was the Taliban. Mr. Ihsan however, does not quite have the credibility I need in order to believe him. He also tells me he wants her killed because she ‘promoted secularism’ and had the shamelessness to quote to me the Quran and the sunnah to justify the most despicable act. Indeed, the devil can cite scriptures for his purpose.

I would really like to know and condemn whoever is behind this in the strongest possible terms. But I cannot but put my finger on a murky, dubious and elusive entity that is called Taliban. I do not know what that is, except that it is an umbrella-term for something far more nuanced and complex than the term implies; used more liberally, loosely and expediently than it should- by both those who call themselves the Taliban as well as those who use it for others. Because while it originally described a popular defensive struggle against warlordism and civil strife in Afghanistan and thereafter against the US occupation of the same, it is now adopted by a band of sorts, consisting of mercenaries, petty criminals, hired assassins, agency funded terrorists, double agents, spies and pathological fanatics. Their link with the original Pashtun resistance by this name in Afghanistan remains unclear and questionable, and often denied by mainstream Taliban leadership in Afghanistan.

The skewed up mindset I read in the letter by Ihsanullah Ihsan is sickeningly diabolical. I stop and think what kind of a mind would call for the killing of a mere child using a completely irrelevant, ill-fitting and utterly out-of-context sacred text to justify the point-blank targeting of a female child who had come to mean so much for so many. Even if one cannot expect moral scrupulousness from the Taliban, this sounds like a masterstroke of grandiose stupidity in terms of political consequences as well as psychological repercussions. It is an absolutely suicidal move on the part of the Taliban, given the fact that the very natural and very expected sympathy for the innocent victim will bring utter condemnation and ruination to their cause. It is only natural that a pretty little girl wanting to educate herself and getting shot in the head by misogynistic terrorists for it will deflect any sympathy there may have been for what the Taliban fight for and will provoke the ire of all feeling hearts.

But perhaps there is method in this madness? For one, the episode came to light right after Imran Khan’s peace march against drone strikes had managed to draw attention to this issue that ails the heart of many Pakistanis, and just when there was talk of creating grounds for an operation in North Waziristan.  A news report in ‘The Express Tribune’ on September 17, 2012 entitled ‘North Waziristan Operation to Stay Under Wraps’ quotes a Pakistan government official saying that Pakistani authorities plan to create a ‘necessary environment’ for the Waziristan operation. Moreover, soon after the attack_ given the overwhelming public sympathy_ there is conspicuous effort to swing opinion in favour of the necessity to use drones to hit targets in the region and the necessity to begin a military operation in North Waziristan agency. This had been a demand from the White House since some time. 

I must be allowed to wonder who really is the beneficiary of it all? The pattern I detect is a familiar one. Before the Swat operation some years ago, opinion had been swung in support of it after the screening of a video that showed the Taliban lashing a yelping woman. Months later, a small news strip revealed the video had been a fake one. It did not matter then, for the deftness of the forgery had come in handy to justify the operation and to give an inept regime reasons for self-congratulation over something the Former Dictator had failed to do: rally public opinion before a military move into the restive, bleeding north.

Last month’s joint report by Stanford and NYU on the impact of the drone strikes in Pakistan calls them ‘damaging and counterproductive’ as opposed to the false US narrative of these being ‘surgically precise effective tools’ to hit specified targets with minimal collateral damage. The report documents 2562 to 3325 casualties by drone strikes since 2004, out of which 474-881 are civilians including 176 children.  The number of injured is roughly between 1226 to 1362 individuals. The report includes harrowing narratives of survivors and victim communities in a region where the ‘free media’ of the country cannot dare to tread.

I may be dubbed a hopelessly illiberal fanatic for linking up the Malala incident to the drones when I say that the sympathy generated for Malala must also be for all victims of terror, drone strikes, sectarian and ethnic killings, indiscriminately. We cannot discriminate between dead bodies just because it may not be ‘politically correct’ to question and condemn the cause of the deaths of some, depending on who the killer is. However, the necessary link between Malala and the drone strikes is best drawn by an anonymous lady holding up a most unforgettable placard that confounds the senses: ‘Drones Kill so that Malala can Live.’ I commend her scathing honesty. Few can put so succinctly the political agenda behind the state-sponsored media campaign for Malala and the vital link that does exist between the two. It is, in fact, quite ordinarily a strategy of psychological warfare to generate favourable opinion and support for a planned military offensive which may otherwise be opposed and questioned on moral grounds. In American military terminology, this vital strategy is called PSYOPS (Psychological Operations). Wikipedia explains: 

“Psychological operations are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.The purpose of the United States psychological operations (PSYOPS) is to induce or reinforce behavior favorable to US objectives. They are an important part of the range of diplomatic, informational, military, and economic activities available to the US. Strategic PSYOPS include informational activities conducted by the US government agencies outside of the military arena.”

So now again I hear talk of military operations with renewed vigour while public outrage is toned down and muted. Hawks who cannot see beyond a military solution to the complex, deep-rooted phenomena on the rampage in the tribal north must be patting themselves on the back for yet another tawdry, meaningless triumph. I shudder to think of the possibilities being contemplated.

And I wonder if this really is all about girls education as it is being made out to be? How effective will this be to further the cause of education for the girlchild in this country? Or will it blow to smithereens more lives, generate more terror wreaking havoc on human lives and keeping little girls away from school? And I think of those other victims it is not good manners to make mention of: those battered anonymous and unsung lives connected to so many other lives; of children whose dreams of brighter futures die away and recede into the falling debris; and of my religion audaciously sinned against and made a malleable ploy to the whims and unholy ambitions of evil self-appointed guardians of it.

But if we wish to reach solutions we must be ready to understand, ask questions and wonder why, really? If it is really an ideology that motivates the Taliban’s diabolical moves, I wonder why the ideology never drove these misogynistic Pashtuns into paroxysms of fury and frenzy when Swat hosted tourists and many young honeymooning couples a decade ago? A friend born and raised in Swat speaks of the cheerful, chivalrous, hospitable people with well-knit and warm community lives. My mother who went to school in Nowshehra and Peshawar reminisces of ruddy chivalrous Pathan youths escorting groups of girls to school and of bright-eyed Pathan girls following their dreams into high school and college, many of whom graduated as professionals. So where exactly has it all turned awry? Ideologies do not take birth instantaneously; but vengeance does.

And, if it really is an ideology that motivates the madness, can the use of wholesale, blind brute-force that does not discriminate, defeat it? The answer is a most basic lesson of history it would serve us well to learn.

And somewhere, this simplistic narrative I must believe, just does not cohere.

The pointer here is that maybe this uncontrollable hydra of insane extremism and terrorism is the work of our own fumbling, bloodied, sinning hands? Maybe it is the inevitable result of the dirty deals we brokered and the unholy alliance we forged in indecent haste and sinister hush? And maybe the monster will not be tamed and cut down to size unless we dare to understand that violence begets violence, and the victim does not forget or forgive; that drones don’t see the faces in the dust nor hear the moans in the darkness, but that the faces are people and lives and stories forever knitted into several other stories with the silken ties of love. And by being complicit in this unholy mission, we make these sad stories ugly, grotesque, haunting, terrifying, vengeful. And our own story of ignominy and annihilation is writ indelibly by the Moving Finger. 

Commuting Between 'Two Worlds'

CRAVING 'MIDDLENESS'

Maryam Sakeenah

I travel across two worlds in my 20-minute commuting distance between both my workplaces: a modern religious school and a private grammar school where scions of Pakistan’s moneyed elite are privileged with quality education in tune with modern needs. The mindsets I deal with, the attitudes I encounter make for interesting comparison. At the religious school, the concepts of the sacred and the profane as defined by absolute religious morality are the framework for all thought-patterns and behaviour. Fidelity to the sacred is the highest value promoted and readily accepted- at least ostensibly- in an environment designed to actively encourage it. At the grammar school, the central value is free thinking and critical inquiry rigorously promoted by the administration. The curriculum is built around and disseminates post Enlightenment Western perspectives and metanarratives, with the fundamental premise being that of morality being relative, and of individual liberty being the highest value to be protected and safeguarded. Students are taught to invariably seek answers and explanations through logic, and question where the logical basis for an assumption seems unsatisfactory. While the tendency is generally positive, its universal and indiscriminate application may in fact be reminiscent of the cold, rock-hard post- Enlightenment Rationalism that Post Modernist thought struggles to throw overboard for some of the infamous disasters attributed to it. 

It strikes me each time in my Religious Studies class I raise a point from within the Islamic tradition that requires acceptance through faithful submission. While the classes are delightfully interactive  and invigorating with questions, debate and discussion, the same may also at times afford a glimpse into a stark, gaping abyss that lurks at the heart of this kind of education that carries the baggage of post Enlightenment thought.

I happened to mention in the course of a class discussion, the fact that the wearing of gold for men is strongly discouraged in the mainstream Islamic tradition, and was showered with sceptical comments on the rationale of the ruling that bordered on impertinence. ‘But guys look so cool with all those accessories, and what about those gorgeous wedding rings? What’s just so wrong with this? I mean I don’t see the point,’ said a particularly spirited young lady. I am also very often asked to suggest quick and easy ways to help students get regular with the daily prayers. And I always find myself unable to provide short and easy solutions, because the will to express adoration, submission and reverence to God in the daily prayer is engendered by a deep humbling sentiment within_ ‘God-consciousness’ (taqwa)-  not attainable through the Logos alone. 

The Western logocentric worldview ruthlessly drilled into these minds that privileges objective, empirical knowledge and rationalist thought over the intuitive ‘mythos’ does not help create the sentiment that can make the daily prayer an act of loving labour. Judged and perceived by the logocentric yardstick, worship rituals ‘lose the magic’, reduced to an arduous, necessary undertaking that doesn’t quite help in the business of life. Moreover, the prioritization of individual liberty as the core value makes the demands placed by religious belief on personal behaviour and conduct become confining and restricting. The ascendancy of Logos over Mythos interprets existential questions as objectively knowable, reducible to ‘facts’ and explainable by ‘empirical evidence.’ Religion with its core principle of a Transcendent Unknowable Absolute Truth intuitively experienced through the exercise of the mythos therefore is unappealing to the highly intellectualized mindset produced in modern urban schools. This also explains the rising incidence of Atheism in Pakistan’s institutions for the ‘privileged elite’- high schools, colleges, universities. Encouraging a culture of questioning, critical thinking and non conformism to convention, this kind of a ‘privileged’ education makes Atheism an exciting alternative many like to consider with some seriousness and express with an audacity that becomes admirable in that educational context. 

William Egginton writes in ‘How Religions Became Fundamentalist’: “One of the functions of religions was to teach people that the transcendent nature of ultimate reality was such that no human could ever, in principle, come to know the ultimate truth. What is crucial to grasp is that this core principle simultaneously sustains the existence of mythos and logos as two separate but equal domains of knowledge; for if the ultimate, all-encompassing questions are by nature infinite, if human knowledge in principle cannot grasp everything, then practical, objectifying logos is simply not relevant to such discussions, and the holistic, metaphoric standards of mythos have their place. Likewise, to the extent that modernity has allowed mythos to be pushed aside by the practical successes of the scientific method, the axial principle of the transcendence of ultimate knowledge has been weakened. But it is this principle that more than any other works to defend humanity from the dangers of its own certainty.”       

By ignoring and excluding the ‘mythos’ and ignoring the need for religious narrative and myth, our educationists have made young minds incapable of developing an appreciation of aspects of religion inaccessible through pure Logos. Iqbal had said, ‘Reason is the lamp that shows the road, but does not mark the destination’- for the destination lies beyond the abyss that is intractable to reason, and requires the ‘leap of faith’ above and beyond that abyss. Pascal famously said, ‘above the logic in the head is the feeling in the heart; and the heart has reasons of its own that the head cannot understand...’

 On the other side, there is a conspicuous absence of religious discourse in our part of the world that can respond to or even grapple with this heightened propensity for questioning and demanding rational explanations. The rising numbers of young atheists across Pakistan’s higher education colleges and universities therefore is no surprise.

And then there is that other world. At Pakistan’s traditional religious schools (madrassahs), the ‘Dars e Nizami’- a religious studies curriculum that dates from Deobandi seminaries in 18^th century India- is taught. Although it is inaccurate to say that this curriculum is stuck in the medieval past it originated in, given the many new ideas and course contents added to it since, the fact remains that these new course contents deal largely with the refutation of the concepts of other religious schools of thought and sects. There are many madrassahs that also include in the course, a heavily lopsided critique and refutation of Western ideas. This threatens to develop exclusivist tendencies as well as what Sociologists would call a ‘world-rejecting’ orientation that pits the religious graduate against a monolithic and ‘otherized’ world full of false, evil and deviant ideas. According to Dr. Tariq Rahman, “Thus, while on the surface the madrassa curriculum is medieval and unchanging, in reality it changes to refute whatever seems to threaten it. This threat might be from alien religions or philosophies but the fact is that the madrassas do counter it. The madrassas, then, are not static institutions. They are not buried in the past; they are active and dynamic institutions which have seen themselves as being besieged since British days and which are still fighting against the external world.” (The Education of ‘Maulvis’: the Dars e Nizami debate)

The other half of my day is spent at a religious school that struggles in its attempt to protect values sanctified by religion in the midst of what it sees as an amoral morass in the wider society. However, lacking a comprehensive curriculum for a modern Islamic school competing with the urban private school and yet promising something unique in terms of faith, educators at the school face an uphill task. Without the necessary educational basis consisting of traditional aqeedah (the Islamic creed/belief/doctrine/theology) and tazkiyah (ethics, spirituality) science that can help students internalize the values the school aims to impart, these well-intentioned educators’ attempts to mould Muslim personalities in what is seen as an increasingly valueless society become reduced to a superficial imposition. This external emphasis without the internal grounding triggers off among students a variety of responses. Taking for example the issue of the Islamic dress code, the responses range from zealous espousal of it by a small minority, to reaction against the perceived imposition by asserting rejectionist behaviour on the contrary. There are many more that docilely accept the dress code, not understanding or appreciating its symbolism and significance, hence taking it as a matter of course. At best, many of these schools mushrooming now in urban centres, present an alternative environment for students to study much the same that they do in the regular schools, with desperate attempts to include religious jargon, uphold religious form and ritual. The advantages of the ‘Islamic environment’ promised by these schools are debateable, given its islandic and insular nature in a diverse, jostling external environment that the students of such schools eventually have to find space in the midst of. 

However, all said, these kind of modern Islamic schools cannot and should not be so easily dismissed. This kind of school is a response by sincere, educated, religiously inclined novices to the world-rejecting outlook of traditional madrassahs, the obscurantist tendencies of religious clergy and the exclusivist teaching of fiqh (juristic) schools of thought adhered to by respective madrassah administrations. The modern Islamic school is an attempt to bridge gaps, and hence tries to fulfil an important need. However, these schools are in a nascent state, often employ amateurish methods and need to evolve towards maturation.

The madrassah-educated Deobandi muqallid (exclusive follower of a school of thought) whose speech is laced with religious jargon and references to religious authority, and the English-speaking Social Sciences/Humanities student quoting Dawkins and Hitchens represent two ‘worlds’ rubbing shoulders in this society. These two cultures created by two widely differentiated education systems are all set upon a head-on collision course. It is frightening because these ‘cultures’ overlap the stratification of the society along the lines of social class. This means that the university graduate possesses the cultural capital that eventually makes him monopolize resources, sit at the helm of affairs and control policy, even when his value-system is at the fringes of an otherwise deeply conventional religious society. He is poised for the control over the generation of ideas and opinion-making, and constructs inroads into the media and the academia. On the other hand is the culturally deprived religious seminary graduate whose fewer career prospects and the constant fear of poverty complicates the situation for him as he perceives himself as disempowered and reduced to a social underclass. The resentment this breeds means that he may not always react to this predicament in ways that may be measured and moderated. It means the existence- far from peaceful- of two clashing cultures and ideologies pitted against each other in this society. Often the clash is intellectually played out as the discourse and rhetoric emanating from both sides hardens against each other and becomes increasingly intolerant and damning towards the other side- be it from the religious or the secular-liberal fanatic. 

I crave Middleness in a society pulled taught at the seams. The poise of ‘middleness’ can be reached through the understanding that concepts considered ‘secular’ and ‘Western’ and hence diametrically opposed to Islam may not actually be so. Reason and rational thought, democratic values, pluralism and humanism may in fact be as characteristic of Islamic tradition as they are understood to be of modern ‘Western’ secular society, though both traditions have unique ways of understanding these. In the broadest terms, the two may not necessarily be mutually exclusive. Most of these values are shared and universal. However, given our cultural-religious context, these must be interpreted and understood as distinctly envisaged by the Islamic tradition. This is where the need and role of the ulema (Islamic scholars) comes in. 

Nor is it wise in the least to think- as the secular-liberals tend to- that solutions to contemporary problems have to be found beyond religion, or that ‘progress’ has to ape the ‘Western’ paradigm and jettison religion like the Enlightenment West did- lock, stock and barrel. This narrow and superficial approach is the recipe for disaster that will understandably provoke a backlash from the religious sections of the society. The panacea seems to lie in a rediscovery and reassertion of the values of Islam that address contemporary issues- values that may not necessarily be averse to and against what many in the West may also have discovered and advocated: the values of social justice and human rights, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, rationalism and egalitarianism. Religious scholars must engage in the colossal task of reinstating this rather eclipsed Islamic discourse and narrative, evidence for which is voluminous in the Quran and the Sunnah (life and example of the Prophet PBUH). This must be presented in the language and method that can reach out to and address the modern mind. Central and most vital to a solution is the understanding that answers have to be sought (and are amply present) within the religious tradition of this society, and not outside of it. Trying to seek them outside of it is a self-defeating, mislaid endeavour.