| 8 April 2005 | Friday | 28 Safar 1426 |
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HISTORY is silent as to whether there was any distinction in the status of male and female sexes during the beginning of human civilization. However, in later days, females were regarded inferior to males. This idea of inferiority developed to such an extent that the males not only claimed superiority over females but further arrogated to themselves the right to utilize and employ the female sex as they liked.
THE overarching constraint in Pakistan’s ability to expand its industrial production, improve its productivity and international competitiveness and increase its global share of high value-added exports is the size and quality of its human capital.
DEATH sells, otherwise it would not be on television. Death has always been news, obviously. But the death of Diana, queen-apparent of Britain, turned death into a brand-builder. Diana was dead when television picked up the reaction, but her funeral became the template.
Greatness is now measured by television footage. There is nothing wrong or unethical about this, for television is the mass medium of the moment, in a way print could never be, since television news has all the elements that the masses want: it is audio-visual rather than intellectual, it is specific rather than elaborate, and it is free. The length of the camera’s vigil is proof that John Paul II is on the short list of great Popes. Add the fact that he is the only Pope to feature in a comic book, and you need no more evidence that he has the popular vote.
Karol Jozef Wojtyla, who took the name of John Paul upon his election as Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of St. Peter, Prince of Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy and Sovereign of Vatican City, became convinced of his destiny not when he became Pope on 16 October 1978 after the sudden death of John Paul I, but after an assassin’s bullet failed to kill him on 13 May 1981.
The strange story goes back to another 13 May, during the First World War. On 13 May 1917, the Virgin Mary, in a size no larger than a doll, appeared in a vision to three peasant children in a Portuguese village called Fatimah, and told them three things about the future. The first was that the Great War would end soon. The second was that a second world war would begin if Christians did not pray to her. The third revelation was considered so volatile that it was kept secret in the archives of the Vatican. There would be an attempt on the life of a Pope by an atheist, after which the atheist empire would be brought down.
It was not as if a Pope had never been assassinated. By far the larger number of Popes has been more political than ecclesiastical, playing a vigorous role in the politics of Europe and sometimes paying the price of politics. The first Pope to be assassinated was John VIII - the slightly inadequate poison took so long to take effect that the assassins decided to speed things up by clubbing him.
Other inventive methods to get rid of Popes included placing crushed glass in figs or lemons offered to the Holy Father. But the gradual separation of Church and State in Europe changed the nature of a Pope’s power and reduced his vulnerability. Popes now expect to die a normal death.
On 13 May 1981, a Turk called Mehmet Ali Agca, in the pay of the Soviet bloc, fired twice at the Pope in Rome. A bullet lodged in his body, but he survived. Later, the Pope visited Agca in his prison to forgive him, and heard Agca say, in astonishment, “How is it that I did not kill you?” Pope John Paul II offered the bullet extracted from his body at the shrine of Virgin Mary in Fatimah. He knew who had saved him. He also knew that it was his destiny to make the revelation come true. He had in fact started such a mission much before 1981.
When Karol Wojtyla became Pope, Yuri Andropov, the celebrated chief of the KGB and later head of the Soviet Union, apparently warned the Politburo that there would be trouble ahead. They did not have to wait long. Within a year of his election he visited Poland, then still a member of the Communist bloc, and told a million-strong crowd, “You are men. You have dignity. Don’t crawl on your bellies.” Now that much more than a decade has passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we have the virtue of hindsight, those three sentences sound very much like the beginning of the end. He made history, and therefore has a right to be considered historic.
He was a believer in the classic mould, without private doubt or cynicism. His crusades were against atheism, rather than another faith. He made no secret of his antipathy to Godless communism, and once angered Buddhists by describing their religion as a largely “atheistic system”. Buddhist priests boycotted his visit to Sri Lanka. In contrast, he repaired relations with Jews.
He was the first Pope to visit a synagogue and the memorial to the Holocaust at Auschwitz. Very correctly, he described Jews as “our elder brothers”: Judaism, Christianity and Islam believe in the same line of Prophets from Adam through Abraham, differing in only who they consider the last messenger of their God. Jesus, the saviour of Christians, is venerated in the Quran as a “Ruhollah”, or a prophet blessed with the spirit of Allah; and the virginity of Mary is also a Quranic belief, although the Quran rejects any attribution of divinity to Jesus, considering the one God to be indivisible.
He reached out to Islam as well, condemning the Crusades. This might seem a trifle irrelevant, until you examine some of the rhetoric used in contemporary political debate. He may have cooperated with the White House and the CIA in bringing down the Soviet Empire, but he was resolute in his condemnation of the American war in Iraq. He had deep contempt for materialism, often suggesting that little good could come out of an addictive consumerism that defined the modern economy.
Faith is such a rarity now even among the faithful, that John Paul’s conviction in the fundamentals of traditional Vatican doctrine could hardly be popular among liberals. His position on birth control is well-known; he refused to give permission to wear condoms even if the risk was to life. Mother Teresa, who he adored, had similar views. The Catholic Church under him thereby finessed itself out of the debate on Aids. He hesitated to criticise misconduct of his priests, even when the misconduct was sexual.
Men of power are not immune to contradictions; they must be judged on the tilt of the balance. Personally speaking, and without meaning to hurt any sentiment, Pope John Paul’s contribution to the edifice of the international Church that was his parish is less important than his contribution to the idea of faith. The battle between faiths has been superseded by the battle for faith against the spreading triumph of rationalism.
Faith is reasonable, but it is not rational. Faith is moral, ethical, doctrinaire and inspirational. Faith believes that there are limits to man’s knowledge: he can, for instance, understand how he is born, but not why. He must leave the why to God. As the verse from the Quran that is recited during a funeral (“Inna li-llahi wa inna ilay-hi raji’un”) puts it, we belong to God, and we return to God.
In an age that raises intellect to the power of prophecy and science to the status of a religion, John Paul believed in a faith that could move mountains. He did move one whole range of mountains, when he took on the Soviet empire. He was never ashamed of the tears shed in prayer. A sufi would have understood this. You do not have to agree with Pope John Paul in order to respect him.
For a believer the strange tale of the prophecy of the Holy Mother in the village of Fatimah would not have been strange at all. His sense of history would be deeply imbued with the doctrine of predetermination, the belief that nothing happens except by God’s will. Does that make him “backward” and “pre-modern”, a dinosaur from some “pre-enlightenment” age? There are doubtless people who think so. Strangely, the one quality that unbelief does not possess is humility. It needs must condemn the other to contempt. Three centuries ago the Church sent the heretic to the stake; today, the heretic sends the believer into the bear’s pit of ridicule. The behaviour of reason has not been as reasonable as you might expect.
Pope John Paul II believed in miracles. He lived beyond the age of reason.
The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi
ONE CAN DEBATE the merits of creating personal accounts in Social Security in the United States but not the case for fixing the programme’s solvency problems.
Over the next 75 years, as the Social Security trustees reported last week, the programme has a projected deficit of $4 trillion; the longer the nation waits to address this problem, the nastier the tax hikes or benefit reductions that will result. But that’s not the impression conveyed by some Democratic leaders.
The trustees’ report, according to Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid “confirms that the so-called Social Security crisis exists in only one place: the minds of Republicans.” The senator’s desire to score political points is understandable. His willingness to do so by implying that Social Security is healthy is not.
Democrats defend this opportunism by saying the president is worse. President Bush, they complain, is talking up an alleged Social Security “crisis” in order to ram through an unrelated proposal to create personal accounts. But, in addressing Social Security, Mr Bush is taking on an issue that the Clinton administration also regarded as important; he is not inventing a problem.
He can be faulted for not specifying the benefit cuts or tax hikes he favours to restore solvency, but at least he acknowledges some will be needed. In that context, personal accounts are not irrelevant; they involve risks, but they are potentially a way of cushioning the necessary benefit cuts in the traditional Social Security system.
The Washington Post
All the dull and uninteresting tasks were, therefore, assigned to her. The Bible tells us that Satan misguided Eve, who in turn misguided Adam, and he ate the forbidden fruit (Genesis 2-3) and they were thrown out of heaven. Thus woman has always been viewed as the real cause of the first sin and not man.
Contrary to popular belief, the Quran has clearly indicated that Satan misguided both Adam and his mate together. (2:36). Christians believe that Adam was created first. When he felt lonely, Eve was created from his rib (Genesis). Unfortunately many Muslim theologians have the same belief. At another place, in Bokhari, it is written “Abu Huraira narrated that Muhammad when he peeped into Heaven, he saw the poor and when he looked into Hell, and he found the majority to be women”.
It must be noted that Muhammad is also reported to have said that heaven is at the feet of the mother. Such contradictory traditions make women hateful and even Quranic concepts are interpreted wrongly in the light of pre-conceived ideas which do not reflect the true Divine message. One can easily infer that these traditions were coined by men who considered women to be of low integrity only suitable to be their wives fulfilling their lowly desires and nothing else.
The following verses of the Quran make it clear that men and women are partners and equally capable. “Men are capable of integrating themselves by the laws of Allah and so are women. Man can belong to the party which believes that the sure result of following Allah’s laws will be universal peace, and so can women. Men have the capability to preserve their abilities in such a way that they use them only in accordance with His laws, and so have women. Men are capable of proving the truthfulness of their claims about truth and conviction, and so are women.
“Men are steadfast, so are women. Men bow more and more in front of the laws of Allah as they develop their abilities more and more, and so do women. Men can be charitable and so can women be. Men can control and restrain themselves from whatever is asked of them, and so can women. Men can control their sexual desires, so can women. Men are capable of comprehending and considering the laws of Allah at all times, and so are women. Since all the above qualities are available in both men and women, results of their efforts shall be the same. Hence in Allah’s system both have protection and great reward” (33:35).
These ayats (verses) show that women can do what men can do and just as well. There is no aspect of human life about which Allah might have given ability to men and not women. The Quran further says that both men and women shall enter Heaven together, may it be the heaven of home, society or the hereafter.(3:195).
The Quran completely changed man’s attitude towards woman. It placed the relation between them on a basis of equality. Of course, man and woman are not absolutely the same. In some facets of life one excels the other. It is a necessary consequence of the fact that their roles in life are complementary to each other. “God has created you that one excels the other (in certain aspects)” (4:34) The spirit of the Divine message is that mankind will attain human stature only when it speaks about man and woman in terms of human beings and not with reference to sex distinction.
In the Asian cradles of civilization woman was no better off. In Hinduism, females are barred from reading the Vedas. In pre-Islamic Arabia, and even our modern day South Asian Muslim culture, women are degraded and considered ignominious for the family. Very few rejoice the birth of a girl. Female infanticide was common in Arabia.
In such conditions Muhammad stood for the rights of woman and gave them respect, reverence and honour. They were not allowed to be treated as property of the males. Islam denounces this custom and commands people to love and cherish their daughters. No doubt in the distribution of responsibilities there are certain functions particular to the woman e.g. pregnancy, childbirth and the caring of children. For this reason her body is built differently from man and so is her psyche which comprises abundance of love, affection and sacrifice.
The Quranic term for the community of Muslims is Ummah and is derived from Umm (Mother). Even in the beginning of the Quran, Allah is mentioned with His attributes of Rahman and Rahim (Gracious and merciful) from the Arabic root word ‘Rhm’. The term is also used for womb and exemplifies the nourishment, care and development provided to the unborn child in total security and comfort by the mother.
Marriage is the foundation of a stable family, community and society. It is a contract freely entered into by man and woman. A woman is absolutely free to marry anyone she likes. Man cannot marry a woman against her will (4:19). Both men and women are responsible for raising a family properly. If, however, a woman can earn her own living, she is free to do so. “Whatever she earns belongs to her” (4:32)
Man and woman are equal partners, as a team, in maintaining their home and family. Woman’s rights are to be respected as much as man’s. One gender cannot be superior or inferior to another if their rights and obligations are equal. The husband cannot encroach upon the rights of the wife. “The husband-wife relationship is based on closeness and reciprocity. Women have rights as much as they have obligations” (2:228).
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is reported to have said that the most perfect of faith among the believers is the best of them in morals and the best of them are those who are kindest to their wives. In his last sermon he said, “O my people you have certain rights over your wives and some have your wives over you. They are Allah’s trust in your hands. See you treat them with all kindness.”
The most important responsibility of an Islamic government is to order what is right and stop what is wrong. In this respect, both man and woman are equally responsible. “Men and women are each other’s friends and benefactors. Both of them order what is right and stop what is wrong. God has promised the believers, both men and women, goodly dwellings in gardens of perpetual bliss” (9:71, 72).
Under Islamic Laws, daughters before their marriage are the responsibility of the parents, but they are exempted to spend anything on their marriages. It is the sole responsibility of the husband to bear all the expenses of his marriage and is expected to hand over the money for this purpose in advance as Haq-i-Meher. Ali, the fourth caliph, had to sell his armour for this purpose. Unfortunately these Divine and beneficial injunctions are being ignored in our society creating problems and miseries. Haq-i-Meher has now become a mere formality and is rarely paid before marriage.
Divorced women, due to their financial helplessness often fall prey to the evils of society. Islamic law took care of them and saved them from financial constraints. In the first instance, the ownership of the house in which she was living before divorce is automatically transferred to her and the husband has to leave the house. “Do not expel them from their homes and neither shall they be made to leave unless they become guilty of immoral conduct.”(65:1).
This injunction is on the statute book of many Muslim countries including Egypt. In addition to this, she is entitled to a reasonable allowance. Some jurists are of the opinion that such women should be provided with a servant to serve them. The spirit of the Quran is followed largely in the West, but unfortunately we lag far behind in this context.
Islam allowed polygamy, with restrictions, to solve the problems of widows.
The Quran has placed great importance on sexual conduct and the matter of chastity. It requires both men and women to be chaste. In fact, it requires men first to be chaste than women. (24:30, 33:35). Unfortunately in most of the Muslim societies, women are expected to be chaste and not men. Women are blamed for any kind of permissiveness in society and not men. One of the main arguments of confinement of women to homes is that the faith (Eeman) gets disturbed if women go out of their homes.
Although Pakistan continues to be a laggard in its social indicators (in terms of low enrolment and high drop-out rates) and suffers from poor quality institutions of higher learning, little is known about the quality of basic education being imparted through educational institutions managed by government agencies.
While enrolment rates reflect the extent to which children are attending school — it covers only the “access” aspect of education — the real indicator of the quality of services delivered through educational institutions is the knowledge of students in subjects being taught to them.
To assess the learning outcomes of children, students of Grade 4 and their teachers were administered a test in a recently concluded survey of a sample of government schools in six representative districts of Punjab (Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Muzaffargarh, Rajanpur and Mianwali). In the 104 schools that were surveyed, students were tested in mathematics and Urdu using an instrument designed by the National Education Assessment System (NEAS) for children who had completed the curriculum developed for Grade 3.
The performance of the students in the tests was so poor that it was heart-rending, highlighting the low quality of instruction delivered through public schools. Since the tests were meant to assess the familiarity of students with concepts that they had supposedly been taught in Grade 3, it was alarming that the vast majority of the students (70 per cent) were unable to score even 30 per cent in maths.
Of the 595 students tested in maths only six per cent were able to score more than 50 per cent. The students maintained that they were unfamiliar with a large proportion of the concepts covered in the test that had ostensibly been designed on the basis of the curriculum and textbooks of Grade 3. The performance of students in the Urdu test was somewhat better. Around 42 per cent of the 619 students who sat for the Urdu test did not get pass marks (which were pitched at a mere 30 per cent) and 28 per cent scored more than 50 per cent marks. In view of the difficulties experienced by students in attempting the tests, it was decided to administer the same tests to teachers to assess their knowledge of the concepts they were required to pass on to their students. It was highly disturbing to discover that more than 18 per cent of the teachers were unable to score even 50 per cent in the same maths test, while a mere 31 per cent managed to get more than 75 per cent despite reliance on textbooks and collaboration with other colleagues in some instances.
Teachers who were matriculates (the minimum academic requirement for primary teachers until the recent change mentioned below) were able to attain an average of just 56 per cent, compared with the average of 69 per cent obtained by teachers who were graduates, although still well below what they should have scored considering that they were being tested on basic concepts that children in Grade 3 are expected to know!
Further analysis of test results in maths revealed that teachers, particularly females, encountered problems in solving questions relating to interpretation of very simple graphs, conversion of weights and measures, rather simple fractions and even calculations of the area of basic shapes. The difficulties experienced by teachers in solving simple mathematical problems meant for students who have completed Grade 3 reflects the poor quality of the teaching force educating this country’s future generations.
The policy of hiring teachers with low academic qualifications for primary grades in the past, the political patronage exercised during teacher recruitment, the ineffective mechanisms for providing on-going instructional support to teachers, the low quality and inadequate duration of the teacher training courses for staff development and rampant teacher absenteeism without any penalties for negligence of duty have all contributed to the dismal standard of education delivered through public institutions. This suggests that an issue much larger than the low rates of literacy and enrolment is the disappointing level of knowledge of not just the children but more importantly that of their teachers.
Recognizing the need to improve the quality of teachers, the Government of Punjab has introduced a transparent, merit-based system for recruiting teachers on contract and school-specific basis and has raised the minimum academic entry requirement for teachers to graduation, all in the hope of reducing the scope for political interference in teacher recruitment and transfers.
The new merit-driven recruitment policy is a step in the right direction as better qualified teachers are expected to significantly impact on the quality of education in publicly managed schools. However, it will take some time before this new policy starts making a visible difference to the learning outcomes of children as new teachers gain experience and replace the old group of poorly qualified and inadequately trained teachers.
Until this happens and the quality of the institutions of higher education is improved so that we can get a better crop of graduates to serve as teachers, we will continue to be constrained in our efforts to enhance the productivity and skills of our work force.
It appears, therefore, that there is still a long way to go, and that too if we start making, and sustaining, the necessary adjustments today. In the meantime, there is every reason to fear that these young, new entrants will eventually imbibe the culture and mindset of the “regular” teachers and adopt their relatively relaxed attitudes and work ethics and focus their energies on getting themselves re-categorized as “permanent” employees, resulting in most potential gains from the new policy being lost to the country.
ONCE AGAIN the independent investigators into the United Nations’ oil-for-food scandal have pulled no punches. Their latest report has not, as critics feared, shied away from criticizing the behaviour of powerful U.N. officials.
On the contrary, it has examined in detail the behaviour of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as well as that of his son. Kojo Annan worked for Cotecna Inspection S.A., a company that won a contract to inspect goods coming into Iraq under the oil-for-food programme.
While the investigators found that Kojo Annan misled the secretary-general about the length of his employment, and while it seems all too clear that he intended to profit from his UN connections, the probe did not find any evidence that Cotecna won its UN contract thanks to Kofi Annan’s intervention. Nevertheless, the report does not, as Mr. Annan claimed this week, amount to an “exoneration.”
For while Mr Annan was not found guilty of direct corruption, the portrait of the secretary general’s office, as it emerges from the report, is not attractive. Mr Annan’s former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, is found to have authorized the destruction of three years’ worth of documents — a procedure that began, perhaps not coincidentally, right after the investigation was launched.
The head of the United Nations’ office of internal oversight, Dileep Nair, is also found to have paid the salary of a staff member using money that had been designated for the administration of the oil-for-food programme.
This is particularly disturbing, given that Mr. Nair was the person responsible for monitoring UN management systems and the staff member was employed to design an anti-corruption programme. These new revelations, when added to the portrait of dicey procurement practices outlined in the previous oil-for-food investigation report, don’t exactly make the United Nations look like a model of efficiency.
For many at the United Nations, the publication of these reports, along with other recent revelations — trafficking among peacekeepers, sexual harassment scandals among UN bureaucrats — have created a real sense of crisis. And rightly so: Unless the organization undergoes serious, deep and immediate reforms, it will lose what remaining credibility it retains.
The United Nations and its agencies perform many vital functions, from global health monitoring to crisis coordination.
—The Washington Post