| 02 May 2004 | Sunday | 11 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
Elections to end confusion
There is a move in the country to revise the present school syllabuses, presumably because the existing ones do not impart to our children and adolescents information and skills at levels found in the more progressive societies. Some commentators on the subject insist that, in addition to information and skills, education must also plant certain attitudes and values in the student's mind.
When folks of my generation were children, elementary education began with teaching kids the three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic). By the time we got through the third grade, we had learned to read simple texts and write them out. We had memorized the multiplication table, and were able to do simple additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions. At this stage we were also given glimpses of history and local geography.
All of these subjects along with a few others (physics, chemistry, algebra, geometry, English, a classical language of one's choice) were taught at increasingly higher levels of attainment as we went from the elementary to the middle and then to high school.
Looking back, I am entirely satisfied with the product of public schools before independence. As we came out of the high school, most of us were able to read, write, and speak fairly well, some of us even fluently. We were informed enough to understand the workings of the society in which we lived. We could venture into discussions of politics and issues of war and peace. We were ready to go to college and learn to deal with even higher levels of complexity.
There is general agreement among observers that the standards of education in the country have fallen precipitously during the last thirty years or so. In other words, the product of our public schools is not as capable as it used to be. A few years ago I was astounded to see that the young son of a servant at a friend's house in Islamabad, a third grader in a public school, simply could not read his Urdu textbook.
It is unlikely that this deterioration has resulted mainly from insufficiencies in the syllabuses of courses taught in schools. It is true that newer concepts and approaches have made the old course content in certain subjects - for instance, mathematics - obsolete, and substantially new syllabuses must therefore be devised. But that is not the case across the board. Syllabuses do get revised periodically everywhere to take account of the relevant advances in knowledge. But more often the changes made, from one revision to the next, are incremental, not radical.
Want of competence and professional commitment among teachers, admitted at all hands, must be blamed for the deterioration of our educational standards more than any deficiency in the syllabuses. Even after we have streamlined our syllabuses, the quality of our education will not improve unless our teachers begin to take their mission more seriously.
This aspect of the matter should be kept in mind even if we cannot discuss it now, because today we are concerned with the issue of syllabus revisions.
Given that syllabuses are being changed, it may be appropriate to ask which way the undertaking should go. If the objective is to bring our standards approximately at par with those prevalent in modern societies, the task should be fairly simple as far as math, hard sciences, and value-free subjects such as geography are concerned.
The modernizers should sit down with sets of textbooks in these subjects used in American, a couple of European, and Japanese schools and, for reassurance and to use as points of departure, those used in India, Singapore, and Malaysia. They can pick and choose from the contents of these textbooks and come up with their own syllabuses. Difficulties may arise when they deal with the humanities and social sciences.
Under the leadership of the late Ismail al Faruqui, an eminent professor of Islamic studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, a group of Muslim scholars initiated a movement to Islamize knowledge and, to begin with, launched The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences in 1984. Muslim scholars elsewhere, at other times, may also have had the same thought, but Professor Faruqui's initiative was the one more generally known.
In any case, the ambition to Islamize knowledge surfaced in Pakistan too, and it resulted in the insertion of Quranic verses and sayings of the Prophet (PBUH) in school textbooks and, in some cases, expulsion of material from them because of its alleged repugnance to Islamic values or its incompatibility with Islamic versions of events or phenomena.
It seems that the textbook boards in Punjab and Sindh have recently taken some of these Islamic insertions out of the books they have prescribed and published. In a recent statement (April 8), MMA and PML (N) spokesmen have denounced these revisions as part of the government's allegedly hidden plan (under American dictation) to secularize our society. They have threatened to launch a mass movement to thwart this design.
The efforts to Islamize the hard sciences are entirely dysfunctional. Jaafar Sheikh Idris (professor of Usul al Din at the Islamic University of Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud in Saudi Arabia), writing on "Islamization of the Sciences" in the journal referred to above (December 1987), makes the following insightful observation:
"We should not make it a methodological rule to look for empirical facts supportive of religious statements, or religious texts which support empirically established facts. It is a rule which it is impossible to apply in practice." He goes on to say that the rule would put us in one of two equally dangerous positions: "either to give scientific statements far-fetched meanings to make them suit religious claims or twist religious statements to force them to lend support to scientific facts."
Why should we place verses from the Quran in a book on physics? Presumably to show that something that modern physics has found now was known to the Quran 1,400 years ago, and to deduce from that coincidence the proposition that the Quran is a great and true book. But that is a proposition of the validity of which we are already convinced.
To make the greatness of the Quran dependent on its compatibility with modern science is to insult it. The reverse (conditioning the validity of scientific findings on their confirmation by the Quran) will leave science in degradation since the Quran makes no mention of most of its findings.
I suggest that any scientific assertions we encounter in the Quran have been placed there either to illustrate some point being made in that particular context, or to call attention to the creativity and majesty of God. It will bear emphasis that the Quran is a book of law and morals, a book of guidance in human interaction. It is an error to regard it as a book of science or a book of sociology, anthropology, or even history (notwithstanding its passing references to personalities and events).
The foremost obligation of a writer in the humanities and social sciences is to report the ground reality in his area of concern, tell us what things are like and how they move. If this reality has an Islamic content, we should know about it. But he cannot "Islamize" the reality he encounters if it is not already Islamic. A sociologist who has chosen to study Pakistani society must tell us how it is actually organized (castes and sub-castes and tribes), how its various segments interact, what its customs and mores are.
This part of his enterprise must remain untouched by his own ideological preferences. Depending upon the scope of his inquiry, he may come to issues of social policy where value judgments become relevant: for instance, abolition or curtailment of feudalism, among many others. This is the proper place for bringing in Islam 99 - verses from the Quran, if you will - as a set of guidelines for social change.
Moves to Islamize the syllabuses are prompted by the desire to enable the students to become good, practising Muslims, truly moral persons. Reflection will show that these moves are based on a misunderstanding of how people become good. Children learn math, but nor morals, at school.
In a charming introduction to his article a few days ago, Mr Hafizur Rahman recounted our lack of receptivity to the good advice that came our way in school from Sheikh Sa'adi's "Gulistan" and "Bostan" and the writings of other illustrious teachers of morality. Nor did the exhortations of professional preachers (imam and khatib in the neighbourhood mosque) make any impact on our choice of value and ways.
We learned Islam at home and became practising Muslims, more or less, to the extent our parents and other family members were. We got our attitudes, including prejudices, partly from home but largely from our peers on the street and playground, and in social gatherings. MMA and PML(N) spokesmen can be sure that no amount of Islam in the school textbooks will make their readers good Muslims.
It is entirely unrealistic to think that knowledge of ethics makes a man moral. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that most of the high-class crooks in the world today are men and women of considerable educational attainment. The ulema among us are supposed to be well acquainted with the Islamic code of morals. But, as we all know, the conduct of many of them leaves much to be desired in terms of Islamic righteousness.
The enterprise of Islamizing our government and politics, society and economy, culture and education has been grounded in hypocrisy, at best in superficiality, from day one. This is apparent from the fact that none of its proponents are out there campaigning against corruption, deceit, fraud, falsehood, breaking of covenants, humiliation of women, exploitation of the poor, and tyranny over the weak. If they do not regard the eradication of these vices and atrocities as the central part of their mission, what good will their Islamization bring us, and what exactly are they promising?
The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.
E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net
Elections to end confusion
General Musharraf took over power pledging to manage the affairs of the state better than the elected governments did before him. Instead of heading straight for the goal, he chose a devious course which over his four years is littered with the debris of his plans and the hopes of the people.
Like his military forerunners - Ayub Khan and Ziaul Haq - Musharraf aspired to give to the country its own brand of democracy. Unlike them, he thought the generals alone could do it all. Musharraf viewed the organized civilian cadres as a hindrance rather than help in disseminating his ideas and executing his programmes.
Alongside the debris of the hopes of the people thus also lies the debris of the institutions and cadres of the civil administration. If the economy was spared the military attention and has struggled to stand on its legs, it is not because the generals conceded that they were not competent enough to handle it but because the international creditors would not deal with them.
Leaving financial and monetary matters aside, the gamut of state activity, with constitutional amendments at one end and municipal sewers at the other, has been under the control of Musharraf's men. The abolition of the old and creation of the new be it a system, powers or procedure, was all done in-house and behind closed doors. The decisions were made before the bureaus published their drafts to sound the intelligentsia or inform the public.
The power of the president to dissolve the assemblies, the formation of a national security council and the creation of district governments became a foregone conclusion once the chief executive soon after taking over declared his irrevocable commitment to the theories of checks and balances and devolution. The bureaus and the legal advisers were required only to lay down the form and fill in the details.
The fate of the country's premier administrative service was sealed the day, and it was within weeks of the start of the military rule, General Musharraf publicly announced that the "deputy commissioner is a colonial relic" and the "commissioner does nothing" - or words to that effect. The general heading the reconstruction bureau had to prove holier than the Pope. He painted all the administrative and elective systems not just out-of-date but reactionary too.
The revenue and law and order administration with district as its pivot which was the steel-frame of the subcontinent for more than a century and a half introduced by the British but drawing liberally on the traditions and practices of the Moghul empire and the other dynasties and still occupies the centre-stage in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka was pulled down midst glee.
The system devised to replace it through the new police and local government laws has been lurching from one obstacle to another and fails to take hold despite frequent and personal interventions by the president and the prime minister.
Instead of giving the people a voice or relief it has become a turf war in which the federal, provincial and district governments, the national and provincial assemblies and local councils are all fighting to get the largest piece in the pie of patronage and, more importantly, for control on police and other local officials.
The law and order and coordination of departmental activities in the districts both have been thrown into confusion that aggravates with every compromise made to placate the competing interests. Direction and purpose both have been lost and can be retrieved neither by the genius of the NRB nor by the authority of the president.
The remedy lies in keeping the local government, regulatory and law and order functions apart and in clearly demarcating the district (or municipal) and provincial jurisdictions in development projects and in the provision of services.
A state of affairs in which the chief minister of a province threatens to arrest the nazim of his capital city for breaching law and order when he is responsible for maintaining it (it has so happened in Balochistan) can be described only as deplorable. It becomes ludicrous when one measure contemplated to strengthen the role of the nazim in law and order is that no FIR could be registered by the police without the nazim's permission.
The chief minister, thus, may never be able to carry out his threat for the nazim could be arrested only if he authorizes the registration of a report against himself which, naturally, he wouldn't do.
It is such contradictions and ambiguities which have made law and order everybody's pet theme but no one's responsibility. Here we find the airy-fairy theories that gave birth to the district government and police safety commissions at odds with the ground realities. The theory was to devolve power and keep the police and the grass-roots administration out of politics.
The reality is both are deeply embroiled in politics and an already powerful federation has become even more powerful. Could the result of Musharraf's ideas of checks and balances and devolution and his NBR's exertions to implement them be more bizarre?
At the constitutional plane, the Legal Framework Order and the 17th amendment have given rise to new problems without resolving any of the old ones and at the same time has torn politics asunder. The lingering uncertainty about the military command of the president (fostered by the president himself and his ministers) is bound to harden into a crisis as the year nervously passes by.
The individuals deserting parties, the parties merging or splitting, supporting or opposing Musharraf, who has fallen out of favour and who is the dark horse are the questions that combine to make a power tangle in which the hope and anguish of the common man find no place.
The Waziristan campaign is the saddest illustration of a job bungled when it is done by a person to whom it doesn't belong and the one to whom it belongs is either sidelined or demoralized. After 146 deaths, more by some accounts, the hero emerging out of it is not our corps commander but a former Taliban commander Nek Mohammad who is no match for the corp's strategic prowess or firepower.
Starting on a note of "capitulation or get killed" the operation wound up in a madrassah in a truce brokered by the representatives of the religious parties who believe Musharraf betrayed and abandoned the Taliban.
There were no expulsions, no surrenders. One day Bush and Karzai, even Zalmay Khalilzad are bound to look again for 500 or 600 foreign terrorists Musharraf admitted were hiding in South Waziristan.
It is difficult to get rid of the thought that a political agent (as deputy commissioner is called in tribal area) accompanied by his own levies would have made a better deal without firing a shot. One good that can come out of this costly debacle is that musharraf withdraws his instructions to his prodigy of an NRB to arrange the immediate merger of the tribal agencies with the settled areas.
Neither political manoeuvres nor wrangling in courts but a reference to the people could put an end to this pervasive, enervating confusion. The events of the past 18 months have robbed the October 2002 elections of whatever little credibility they had.
That puts the ball in the prime minister's court. He should advise the president; at a time of his own choosing but not too far away and certainly before December 31, to dissolve the parliament and hold elections afresh. That might earn Zafarullah Jamali a place in politics and in the esteem of the people which his being a prime minister would not.