| 11 April 2005 | Monday | 01 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426 |
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Chashma-II power plant
AMONG the tasks that need to be addressed with vigour is the Christian-Muslim dialogue initiated by the late Pope John Paul II. An activist pope, John Paul II would be remembered for chipping away at the Catholic church’s historical prejudices against Islam and Muslims. Two “events” dealt a blow to the pope’s efforts to bridge the gap between the followers of the two religions. The first was not an event but a piece of writing by Samuel Huntingdon — The Clash of Civilizations — which appeared first as an essay and later in book form. The second was 9/11, which heralded America’s war on terror. While the first turned out to be an unintended intellectual attack on the dialogue, the second roused anti-Islamic feelings at the popular level throughout the western world. It gripped all — from taxi drivers and immigration officials to parliamentarians and university professors. Those playing a leading role in fanning the flames of hate were the media and the showbiz establishment. While the electronic media, led by the CNN, BBC and Fox, pandered to popular frenzy by branding all Muslims as terrorists and Islam as a religion of intolerance and bigotry, Hollywood churned out films that cast gun-toting, red-eyed, bearded Muslims in villainous roles. The print media completed the job by giving currency to such terms as “Muslim fanatics”, “Islamic threat” and “Islamic terrorism”. The book industry also worked overtime to spread hatred against Islam, with journalist Oriana Fallaci spitting venom against Muslims in her book Inshallah that had been in the market for some time.
Regretfully, neither the media nor the intellectuals, barring some, nor the statesmen made a sincere effort to counter this wave of hate. By and large, the western people were never told that the perpetrators of the crime on Sept 11, 2001, were terrorists of whom the vast majority of Muslim governments and peoples disapproved. European politicians, eager to capitalize on the anti-Muslim feelings, worked against Turkey’s EU membership because Islam was thought to present a threat to Europe’s Christian culture. Even President George Bush in his early reaction to 9/11 pledged to wage a “crusade” against terrorism. Later, it was explained that by “crusade” he meant a campaign. In a similar fashion, an American general said Muslims worshipped an idol. An ardent evangelical Christian, Gen. William B. Boykin said Islamic radicals hated America “because we’re a Christian nation... and the enemy is a guy named Satan”. But when a secular Arab Christian intellectual like Edward Said tried to present a correct picture of Islam and Muslims and pleaded for cooperation instead of clash, he was ostracized by the mainstream American media and termed a “Professor of Terror”.
The process of secularization in Europe began after the Peace of Westphalia following the end of the 30-year war in 1648 when the church’s role was defined. The world of Islam today is characterized by an internal conflict in which the Muslim peoples are trying to redefine their faith in this world of satellites and surrogate motherhood. Just as the church controlled mediaeval Europe’s knowledge and culture and excommunicated men like Galileo, so the obscurantist elements in the Islamic world today are trying to control the thought process and describe those who differ as enemies of Islam. Just as the church then believed in burning heretics at the stake, so some fanatics in the Muslim world today believe in the use of force to stamp out dissidents. The attack on a women’s marathon in Pakistan the other day only testifies to the power of this group of zealots. Yet the vast majority of Muslim peoples and governments believe in moderation. Even Osama bin Laden fled Saudi Arabia because his thoughts and actions at the time were deemed dangerous and unacceptable to a conservative society like Saudi Arabia.
The issue in the Muslim world will take time to resolve. The firebrand clerics who spew venom against the Christians and against those who disagree with them are not helping matters. Killing innocent people like American reporter Daniel Pearl and murdering Chinese engineers have sent wrong signals to the world and strengthened those forces in the West which see Islam and Muslims as a threat. The task before the western and Muslim worlds is to recognize the threat which bigots in the Islamic world and born-again Christians in the West pose to the kind of dialogue that Pope John Paul II had initiated. While undeniably there is a history of wars between Christians and Muslims, there is the historical fact that the two sides have gained immensely from cultural intercourse. In the eighth and ninth centuries Arabic translations of Greek classical works revolutionized Muslim thought and led to a flowering of the arts and sciences. The Muslims later paid back the debt when universities in Spain became a source of enlightenment and knowledge for the Christian part of Europe. Today, Muslims are again gaining from access to universities and places of learning in America and Europe. The task before the western and Muslim worlds is to stand up to fanatics and extremists within, and work for deepening the understanding and cooperation between them.
IT is reassuring that China and Pakistan have finally started work on the second unit of the Chashma nuclear power plant as the project is of vital national importance. The 340-megawatt (MW) second unit is expected to be operational in 2011 and will help Pakistan correct its generation imbalance in favour of cheaper sources of energy. Under the 2002 policy for power generation projects, the focus has shifted from meeting the rise in demand for power to promoting cheaper and indigenous sources of fuels and developing renewable energy sources. As of today, Pakistan has an installed generation capacity of 18,598 MW. Of this, nuclear power has a share of barely three per cent while the bulk of the power comes from thermal sources, which stand at 65 per cent, followed by hydroelectric power at 32 per cent. It is predicted that by 2010, Pakistan will face a shortfall in natural gas supply. In that event, a number of power plants now run on gas will become defunct. Keeping this in mind, one option Pakistan has before it is to try to obtain more power from other sources of energy, such as nuclear power. The less desirable option would be to import more oil to run the country’s oil-fired power plants. This is both an expensive and a short-term solution which cannot be sustained for long in view of the rising prices of oil in the world market. Sino-Pakistan collaboration in nuclear power production goes back to the early 1980s when, disappointed by the refusal of certain western countries to sell nuclear equipment for power production, Pakistan turned to China. Chashma-I, which was commissioned in 1999, is the result of this cooperation in the nuclear field for peaceful purposes. Beijing has done well to make it clear that, like Chashma-I, Chashma-II too would be under international safeguards. There is a genuine need for Pakistan to explore alternative sources of energy. It cannot afford a rising oil bill to meet thermal generation requirements while the vagaries of weather and rainfall make hydroelectric power generation an uncertain proposition. To meet this gap, Pakistan has to turn to nuclear power and Chashma-II is a step in that direction. As Pakistan’s power requirements increase, one hopes that more such projects will be undertaken.