Multitasking and the Sunnah

MULTI TASKING AND THE SUNNAH

Maryam Sakeenah

You have to be a multitasker, or you’re old fashioned. It is just so normal nowadays to have a conversation while smsing a friend, listen to a song while typing an email, update your facebook status while looking up a reference on Google, watch the television while at the dinner table with family. This just goes to show the magnitude of the transformation the technological revolution has brought about in our social and even personal lives. Multitasking is the Way of Life.

While the modern lifestyle almost dictates multitasking, is it really an efficient way to get things done and get them done well? Much has been written about it, and concerns voiced about multitasking taking its toll on human relationships, work efficiency and quality, time management, mental concentration and human behaviour.   

What in the old-fashioned eighties would be considered rude manners, disrespect, attention deficit or disinterest is now the way to go about things. In a comedy show, Jerry Seinfeld explains his reasons for not possessing a Blackberry Smartphone: “Blackberry people... their pupils do not focus. They’re not really there. They hold the Blackberry in their hands all the time, because this is what it commands them to do. And they listen to what you are saying and compare it to what is on the Blackberry, and which one is really more interesting...”

It is interesting to note that the term multitasking is derived from computer multitasking. It is a basic computer function. But while machines are built to multitask, can we apply it to human lives as well? The modern way of life demands just that, but it is common observation that it leads to attention deficit, poor time management and poor efficiency. Psychological studies have disclosed that people show severe interference when even very simple tasks are performed at the same time, if both tasks require selecting and producing action. Many suggest that the human brain can only perform one task at a time. (‘Is Multitasking a Myth?’ BBC News, August 20, 2010). Psychiatrist Richard Hallowell has gone so far as to describe multitasking as a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.” (Hallowell, Richard. Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life.) Researchers examined how multitasking affects academic success and found that students who engaged in more multitasking reported more problems with their academic work. (Junco, R. & Cotten, ‘Perceived Academic Effects of Instant Messaging Use.’).
Inability to manage time is a frequent complaint one gets to hear so often. We are by far busier today than ever before, we have more things to do today than ever before, our lives are faster and our tasks speedier than ever before, but we get to accomplish little, if not nothing. Multitasking achieves little. With our uninsightful and rather thoughtless embrace of technology, the ‘barakah’ has quite fled from our lives as we race against time and breathlessly chase deadlines, doing nothing to the heart’s content. We remain perpetual underachievers, perpetually dissatisfied.
As Muslims, the inspiration and guidance always comes from the life of the Prophet (SAW).  While we all know that the Prophet (SAW) possessed a multi-dimensional personality and lived out many roles that inspire all sorts of people, what must be highlighted and reflected upon is how he did justice to each of these roles, lived each aspect perfectly well, and accomplished all of his diverse range of duties remarkably. Whether it be his family life, his political life, his social sphere or his spiritual life, Muhammad (SAW) did it all to perfection. So then, dispensing so many tasks altogether, fulfilling so many of his duties that his position demanded, did the Prophet (SAW) multitask?
Here are some insights from his life that give us some clarity in this regard. For one, the Prophet (SAW) was a beloved husband, and spent quality time with his wives and children. To his friends he was a mentor and a loveable companion. As a military strategist and soldier, a jurist and lawmaker, a head of state, leader and statesman, a teacher and guide, the Prophet (SAW) was the paragon par excellence. Ayesha (R.A) narrates, “The Messenger of Allah talked to us and we talked to him. However, he was as if he had not recognized us when it was time for prayer, and he turned to Allah with his all existence.” This shows that the Prophet (SAW) would give his best to each task, one at a time. While at home, he would be fully involved in domestic affairs, spending time with the people of his household, listening to them, talking to them and attending to their needs. And when it was time for other duties for instance the duty of prayer to his Lord, he would shut out everything else and turn towards his Lord with heart and soul, with complete submission and thorough involvement. This perhaps is why he derived from it an intense pleasure that eludes us today, and could feel that Salat was for him ‘the coolness of the eyes.’ This is also why he managed family matters exceedingly well, and all his wives loved his noble companionship thoroughly.
It is also interesting to note the Prophet (SAW)’s manners of conversing with others. It is said he would speak little, but with gravity, precision, balance and wisdom. More than that, he was an intent listener and would listen to others patiently with complete attention till they had finished. In fact, when spoken to, he would turn himself with full involvement and interest towards the speaker, making him feel thoroughly understood and given importance. It worked wonders in gluing together a closely knit and firmly bonded community of companions, disciples, associates, lovers and devotees who later became integral to the spread of the Islamic mission.
In matters of the state or of military planning, the Prophet (SAW) applied himself fully and achieved astounding results. The fact that the Prophet (SAW) is universally acknowledged by all as perhaps the most successful figure in human history, must make us analyze his approach and methods with some seriousness. The way of the Prophet (SAW) was clearly what may be called ‘uni-tasking’, taking one thing at a time, performing it to the best of his ability till its conclusion without interruption, distraction or interference. It is only when one allows oneself to be possessed by a single idea and executes it to its successful end does one become an achiever with a deep sense of satisfaction. This deep contentment for having attained your target after successfully finishing a task you devoted yourself wholly to is an unparalleled feeling that is the privilege of the Sunnah-abiding Muslim to relish. Muslims are essentially uni-taskers.

Human Rights Violations in Kashmir

KASHMIR: SINKING INTO OBLIVION, RISING FROM THE ASHES  


Maryam Sakeenah


The jarring report on over 2000 unmarked mass graves in Indian Held Kashmir that came to light last month failed to elicit a response from the United Nations. When pressed for comments, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon apologized that he had ‘no comments for now.’ This is not just the UN lacking teeth; it is the UN being reduced to virtual dysfunction_ that is, irrelevance to global context altogether. With emboldened contraventions of its Charter by the most powerful states of the world as well as the much larger role and unrestrained power enjoyed by regional strategic organizations like NATO, the UN, like its predecessor, grows pathetically feeble and ineffectual. Nobody lost a lot of sleep over the contents of the report, and no uncomfortable questions were asked of anyone either.


The failure of human rights abuse in the world’s conflict zones and occupied regions to arouse significant concern shows how violence in the world’s conflict zones has become routinized in our collective consciousness. The world’s collective conscience is desensitized to human rights violations in places that routinely experience them. This silence implies a tacit sanction of occupation and its accompanying practices and doles out licenses to kill for trigger-happy men in uniform that help to maintain an arbitrary hold on suffering populations. We accept the brutality that is the work of human hands and the expression of men’s lust for control, dominance, power as an indelible destiny that some of the unfortunate ones among mankind have to live with. And life goes on.

Mirza Waheed, a Kashmiri journalist and author of the novel ‘The Collaborator’ writes: “Brutalized people are made to behave normally as an acquiescent citizenry... The Indian State wants the world to believe that Kashmir is an integral part of India, and hence speaks often in the language of conquest. Dehumanized conflict management impinges upon the lives of ordinary people. This is a system that allows the executor to live in comfortable moral ambiguity, and wants the victim to renounce all claims to asserting his identity. This is what violence, torture, brutality are meant to do_ to reduce a person, a mind, a collection of minds to a spiritless body; the complete destruction of the will of the victim, which ensures a people are kept in submission and slavery...”


While it is possible to understand and even perhaps empathize with victims whose interminable suffering kills their hope and gradually renders them numb and insensate to the blatant injustice that happens around them, this is not so easily condonable in the case of those who are distanced from conflict and watch it as third persons on television screens. The 60-odd years of the reign of terror in the Occupied Valley , the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, the illegal detentions, disappearances and the Draconian laws to justify these and give cover to perpetrators; and most importantly the state’s refusal to bring violators to book are a damning sentence on Indian state policy on Kashmir. This is important particularly, given Indian aspirations to regional dominance and permanent membership to the United Nations Security Council. These blood-drenched statistics signify an irredeemable loss of India’s ‘high moral ground’ as an aspirant to global power and prestige. It all adds up to a grotesque illustration of and a powerful indictment on the state of the world’s collective conscience and our failure to apply ethics to international affairs.


The Kashmiri is doomed to suffer as long as ‘War on Terror’ realpolitik holds hostage universal ethics, human rights, justice and common decency. In the post-9/11 global dynamics, India has closely allied its Kashmir policy with the larger anti terror narrative of the U.S by selling Kashmir as a classic case of ‘Islamic militancy’ and ‘cross border terrorism’ against a Secular-Democracy, garnering the world’s sympathy and deflecting attention from its own dirty tactics. A world dumbed down by a media governed by corporate interests and powerful lobbies readily swallows the narrative, and Kashmir sinks deeper into oblivion.


The U.S has chosen to bury its head in the sand regarding Kashmir. This exposes the meaninglessness of its rhetoric of democracy, self-determination, freedom, human rights etc, and the sheer hypocrisy of its claim to higher moral ground. The global recession that has hit the U.S economy hard accentuates the importance of the Indian market for the U.S, underscoring the need for stronger bilateral ties. Keeping mum on Kashmir serves everyone’s interests_ or, the interests of everyone that matters.


Pakistan on the other hand, caught miserably as it is between a rock and a very hard place, has very noticeably loosened its hold onto Kashmir, with its focus shifted to its Western border and the bloody, nationwide fallout of its blundering into the northwestern tribal areas. The War on Terror has concentrated itself in Pakistani territory, with Pakistan desperately trying to play up to its ‘most allied ally’ status while an increasingly suspicious, imperious United States threatens to ‘go it alone’ as the trust deficit gapes wider.


Kashmir is the tragic casualty in the new alignment and dynamics in the subcontinent. Amnesia is imposed on Kashmir by India with tacit approval from the U.S, and pathetic, inaudible whimpers of discontent from a hapless Pakistan.


However, in a way, this new state of affairs comes with opportunity. Kashmir has previously been caught between a ceaseless tug of war between India and Pakistan with a terrible national egotism and ideologically loaded stances defining the narrative. With Pakistan loosening its grasp , the indigenous, homegrown Kashmiri narrative acquires greater authenticity. Kashmir emerges as an indigenous, independent struggle for freedom and self-determination springing out of its saffron fields_ regardless of Indian intransigence, Pakistani ambivalence and American caprice.


Allegations by India of the Kashmir struggle being sustained by Pakistan have defined the Indian position on Kashmir and have been used to justify its highhandedness and its relentless militarism in the region. The theory loses ground as Kashmir emerges boldly as an independent movement of its own and on its own, in the face of Pakistan’s diminishing influence and national distraction.


It is this new, emergent trend that the occupier is frightened of and tries to eradicate through desperate measures: mass arrests, custodial murders, cover ups of evidence of diabolical deliberation behind all these. As India aspires to regional dominance and a permanent UNSC seat, it naturally has to be conscious of keeping up an image befitting of the world’s largest secular democracy that it goes about as. This requires gagging the voices from Kashmir and hushing up the noise made by human rights groups; it involves burying corpses in unmarked mass graves in the thick of the night, and whitewashing the blood stains. India’s desperate strategy to crush the bolder, genuine Kashmiri counternarrative is to create victims or potential victims out of all, using constant fear of the arbitrary occupier that creates a sense of helplessness destroying aspirations, hopes, courage; killing the resisting spirit and the will to act in defence. This impels the cycle of violence to continue endlessly and indefinitely, with little moral qualms given India’s powerful media and its global influence.


However, the false, dishonest, morally bankrupt narrative must be defeated by the Kashmiris through their stronger, deeper, genuine counter narrative that goes beyond Indo-Pakistan conventional wrangling, beyond shifty and capricious interests of Someone Else, beyond cosmetic face-lifts by oppressor nations aspiring to global power, beyond spineless leaders and dysfunctional organizations: “For me, what gives hope is the rise of more and more young people articulating their own narrative, their own experiences, their own policies...” (Mirza Waheed)

UK riots: A Sociological Perspective

THE CRACKS BENEATH THE VENEER

Maryam Sakeenah


Without venturing into moral judgement, the massive rioting in UK has, if nothing else, brought to light the fragility of the ostensible peace of ‘developed’ societies, which stirs an engaging debate bearing strongly upon some central sociological and philosophical questions.

For someone as myself coming from a deeply fractured and messed-up society steeped in violence, unrest and social injustice, the material and moral ‘superiority’ of liberal-secular societies in the Northern-Western hemisphere is often referred to as an enviable standard and veritable benchmark. The reckless frequency of the usage of loaded terms like ‘advanced’, ‘developed’, ‘progressive’, ‘civilized’ for specific social contexts rooted in Enlightenment positivism suggests an unquestioning and facile acceptance of an ascendant social paradigm that draws power from the political-historical narrative_ following the Fall of Egypt in Napoleon’s wars in the East_ of the superiority of the post Enlightenment ‘West.’

Societies are shaped by underlying intellectual, philosophical and moral traditions that shape social phenomena and direct social change. The 18th century Enlightenment with its structuralist underpinnings is the predominant factor shaping the social lives of individuals in communities belonging to Europe and North America. The Structuralist sociological perspective conspicuously marginalizes non materialist phenomenological and interactionist elements of sociological thought and those that take a critical view of Structuralism. According to Structuralist-Functionalists, a consensus around values is vital for social order and stability. This implies general agreement among the large majority of the members of a society over its basic values. Speaking of societies in Europe and America, this stabilizing consensus is developed around Utilitarian values that promote ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’, while the Positivist-Structuralist premise defines this ‘greatest good’ in material terms_ economic good, incomes, jobs, health insurance, education, benefits, pensions etc_ the boons of the modern welfare state.

Structuralism, concerned with social structures and institutions rather than individuals, has an inbuilt majority-oriented outlook. What is ignored out of the neat formula for happiness is the not-so-great number of those who do not constitute the favoured and dominant ‘majority’ and therefore do not pledge loyalty to the values that create a system which does not offer them dividends in the same measure as significant others.

Consensus on values comes about when individuals benefit as members of a society and are socialized into it to the extent that they learn to desire only that which the society provides. However, the socialization process for creating value consensus is not always neat and perfect, and cracks do appear. In Utilitatian-materialist societies, economic crises, inequalities etc weaken the socialization process so that some individuals identifying themselves with minority groups do not rally around the society’s core values to generate the value consensus considered necessary for stability and order. Hence they experience alienation. Given the rising incidence of racial profiling and ethnocentric calls for ban on immigration by racist-supremacist groups like the ‘English Defence League’, the alienation gradually turns into an ‘otherization’ of members who do not smoothly and naturally merge into what is classified as the ‘majority’_ white, British, urban, middle-class.

The ethic of ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ leaves marginalized minorities out of the bigger picture. This also explains the attempt by disgruntled minorities to make their sense of alienation be seen and heard by asserting it in spectacular ways. The unsuspecting shock and horror over the events also exposes the extent of unawareness of and insensitivity to the raw sentiment that festers in multiracial, multiethnic British society. Tony Blair in his article ‘Good headlines but bad policy’(The Guardian, August 21), carefully reminded us of the horrific events being the acts of a ‘minority.’ Without contesting this fact, it may be argued that the tenor and the overall meaning of the writer was a subtle trivialization of the tremendous street sentiment at the heart of which lies the deep social alienation, resentment and discontentment of a significant minority. In an attempt to salvage the narrative of the high moral ground of secular-liberal British society, the counter narrative of a marginalized and restive minority is slighted. While the ‘majority’ cleaning up the clutter, as Blair points out, reinstates hope, yet ignoring, trivializing or slighting the almost palpable existence of pent up frustrations among a sizeable section of British population is a grave mistake and shows we learnt little from the events.

However, even a Blair desperately trying to save the face of British society could not altogether brush under the carpet the real issues that stare Britain in the face: ‘the country’s problems stem from too many dysfunctional households... this is a phenomenon of the late 20th century. You find it in virtually every developed nation.’ However, an insightful approach into understanding the collapse of the family in Western society and the discrediting of the family as an institution is necessary, of which not much has been said other than attempts to highlight the general decadence and its origin in dysfunctional families. It has a lot to do with general moral decline and an inadequacy of the education process (whether by families or by schools) that carries the ideological baggage of positivist Enlightenment thought and has discarded the universal moral premise considered sacrosanct in traditional societies. Saeeda Ahmad is an inspiring social entrepreneur and social activist in UK. As a Muslim, she looks at the riots with rare insight through her faith. She writes, ”This year has indeed been a year of much reflection and big change in a very short space of time where civic participation, ethics, Islam, Muslims and many other things have affected us not just as British Muslims but Muslims internationally. From an Islamic perspective some of the key tenets in our faith can help understand the riots: Self accountability, Gratitude, Hope and aspiration, Self responsibility, social and civic responsibility, Defence of others people and property.
These are subjects in their own right but need to be adequately addressed. A different poverty in the UK and in the developed world exists than that in poor countries. It is the poverty of spiritual values. In a developed secular country there may be a state that caters for people's need. It does not replace the human requirement for accountability, hope and compassion towards others. The idea of ‘don't worry, social services will bring you a meal if something happens to you (as long as you meet their criteria) doesn't make me feel great and excited for my old age.”

Also valuable is a critical outlook afforded by alternative social theory. Interactionists have something to say on the matter as they emphasize that the tenuous stability that Structural-functionalists imagine through the generation of value consensus is a blinkered view. Society is not an objective entity ‘out there’, nor is it a monolith. To understand that every individual relates to society based on his individual subjective social experience is essential. For those who lead wretched lives in the streets, Britain may not be the egalitarian welfare state committed to social justice even in the presence of voluminous statistical data to verify that. When this individual’s authentic subjective experience of society is slighted as an aberration and not understood as deserving of serious redress, it will seethe as frustration, anger and even violence.

Marxists offer an insight into the false and deceptive nature of Functionalism’s ‘value consensus’, which they see as imposed from above_ from the privileged, empowered class. The compulsive acceptance of the same by the lower classes guarantees a perpetuation of the privileged status of the moneyed elite. The stability this creates is false, privileging a section of the society over and above another, creating an exploitative stratification. However, this will inevitably give rise to frustration and discontentment as ‘class consciousness’ gradually develops. Any event, even small, may then trigger off a string of events till the false order collapses like a house of cards.

As an important ‘Aside’ from the sociological discourse the dramatic events stirred, mention must be made of the strong case for religious faith that has powerfully asserted itself. It perhaps lies beyond the pale of this debate, but provides some important keys to a deeper and more insightful understanding of the issues at hand. When human life and human society is centred around the utilitarian-materialist premise that is the legacy of the Enlightenment’s positivist enthusiasm; when the resultant definition of happiness is considered the be-all and end-all of life, the lack of material security or a drop in material benefits takes away all meaning and worth from life. A N Wilson, in an important article (‘Legacy of a Society that Believes in Nothing,’ The Daily Mail, August 13), mentions the case of popular British showbiz icons who at the height of popularity ended their lives out of a deep sense of inner emptiness and meaninglessness; he also comments on the morals of a society that reveres their degenerate private lives.

When it is understood that the truly valuable things in life are those you can never buy (in a cutthroat consumerist culture), deprivation, suffering and injustice seen as part of a larger Pattern no longer devastate and madden. They are gracefully accepted even as the right to protest and claim legitimate rights is asserted. This is what was so beautifully and powerfully demonstrated by Tariq Jehan, father of Haroon Jehan_ one of the Birmingham youth of Pakistani origin crushed to his death as he defended his people. Jehan’s simple yet resounding statement in the wake of his personal tragedy strikes at the heart of the matter. Until the secular-materialist pretense is shed off and the ascendant positivist underpinnings of society reassessed giving due recognition to the ‘feeling in the heart’ and the ‘moral law within’, a true qualitative improvement and meaningful, all-inclusive progress in our individual and social lives will remain a distant, elusive dream. As Pascal 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...’