The way to begin an op-ed piece is to have what is called a ‘peg’ on which to hang the rest of the article. This peg is usually some newsworthy event or issue, giving a sense of immediate relevance, which draws the reader to consider the views of the columnist. Thus, the reader knows at the outset where the writer stands and something of what to expect from the rest of the article.
This is a generally good practice that, however, I will not be following in today’s piece. I can only trust I will not be taxing my readers’ tolerance by asking that they follow me to the conclusion of this verbal ramble, as if listening to a long and involved narration that even fails to deliver a punch line.
I was, in my mind, pursuing the vexing question: Why does everything always seem to be going wrong here? However noble or ignoble the motives driving this plan, that process, or this institution, our common experience is, at best, one of a general deterioration that sets in very soon after the inception of practically everything. There are, of course, periods that are relatively better and those that are relatively worse. But the overall trend seems everywhere to be towards either entropic decay or outright violent conflict.
A friend of mine who is a history buff contends that what we need is behavioural transformation, without defining who he counts as “we”. He feels that Pakistan and the Muslim world in general are especially conflict-prone societies, both internally and externally – a premise that few would disagree with. This, he believes, is because these countries are dominated by feudal-tribal elites that are inherently vulnerable to religious extremism, intolerance, and violence. He holds up as a model of behavioural transformation the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, which unleashed the process of innovation, discovery, reasoning, critical thinking, and modernization in that Continent during the late 17th, and particularly the 18th, centuries.
The thinkers of the Enlightenment valued the power of observation, reasoning and critical thinking. This Enlightenment form of thinking had its roots in the humanism of the earlier Renaissance and grew out of the Scientific Revolution. Enlightenment thinkers took the vital intellectual and creative processes of the Renaissance still farther by rejecting authority and upholding the freedom of individuals to think for themselves.
By equating modernization with Westernization, the conservative segments of Muslim society have closed the door for holding an intellectual discourse on keeping pace with change
European philosophers began to even question Christian beliefs, elevating rational understanding above blind Faith. They also criticized accepted ideas about government and such concepts as the Divine Right of Kings, giving air and space to such previously suppressed notions as republicanism, democracy, and equality of citizens. Originating in France and spreading therefrom to the Netherlands, Britain, the German states, and elsewhere, the Enlightenment thinkers included Descartes, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Smith, Hegel, Kant, Paine, and many more. European sciences flourished, with the epoch-making work of geniuses like Newton, Lavoisier, Leibnitz, Linnaeus, and others.
Europe began to dominate the world.
The challenge, my friend feels, is how to awaken the processes of Enlightenment in the post-colonial Muslim world, in general, and Pakistan, in particular, in order to seek the positive transformation of conflicts by pursuing scientific reasoning, innovation, critical thinking, and modernization in thought, approach and way of life. Since peace and progress are the end purposes, one can aspire to such an ideal by creating consciousness that promotes tolerance, reasoning, and open mindedness so that conflicts, which are a source of physical and material destruction, are positively transformed through processes of dialogue.
However, the point is that by equating modernization with Westernization, the conservative segments of Muslim society have closed the door for holding an intellectual discourse on keeping pace with change. Because of the violence European imperialism has committed on the world, we psychologically reject even the positive aspects of the Enlightenment. And reactionary forces that are opposed to enlightened advancement can persuasively exploit this association.
Now, I take the liberty of differing with my friend on two points.
First, he is somewhat disingenuous in suggesting that the European Enlightenment helped to reduce conflict, strife, and violence, followed as it was by the excesses of the Age of Imperialism, on the one hand, and by the irrational excesses of the European Revolutions of the late 18th century and afterwards. 20th century Fascism, too, first raised its hideous head in Italy and Germany, the very lands that sired the Renaissance that would lead to the Enlightenment.
Secondly, it is worth noting that there is indeed truth in the trope that “the streets of Cordoba were lit when the rest of Europe was in darkness”. There certainly was an extended period in Muslim history not unlike the European Enlightenment. Between the 8th and 11th centuries, in cities like Baghdad, Cordoba, Fez, Cairo, Isfahan, and Samarkand, not to mention various others, many thinkers, scholars, and scientists were born and flourished. Names like Al-Kindi, Al-Muslim, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Batuta, Ibn Arabi, Al-Khwarizmi, amongst many others, stand out as giants of knowledge and enlightenment.
But, here’s the thing, Muslim power in Al-Andalus was extinguished in the 15th century: driven out, first from Cordoba and then from Granada, by the combined forces of the Christian Kings of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. In the east, Baghdad was sacked and destroyed by the savage prince Hulegu Khan in the 13th century. Two centuries earlier, Al-Ghazalli had denounced the rationalist Mutazzali philosophers and scientists of the ‘Golden Age’ and helped usher in a continuing period of devotional and ritualistic Islamic practice.
The forces of Imperialism, empowered by the European Enlightenment, went on to take over the world and engirdle the entire planet in its greedy, capitalist grasp.
Now, I am not proposing any simplistic, one line solutions to our problems, those of the Muslim world, and those of the world in general. History shows that there is an element of sense in my friend’s proposal of seeking a revival of the rationalism of the former Ages of Enlightenment (there is more than one such Age, as I have shown here, and certainly others as well in our South Asia as well as the Far East). But there is much else, besides technology and scientific rationality that are parts of the complex mix of processes required going forward.
After all, it is not just Pakistan that is a problem area today, or even just the Muslim world, or even the entire post-colonial Third World. It is the whole of humanity – indeed, the planet itself – that is in crisis. And there are no simple answers.