ISLAMABAD, Aug 26: Renowned sociologist from the University of Pennsylvania Dr Nomanul Haq here on Friday said Pakistani scholars did not know languages, accepted easy and ‘black and white’ explanations while narrating history and suffered from their colonial psychology by giving importance to only those things already taken up by the West.

“There could be no scientific development in an intellectual vacuum or without the availability of an intellectual environment. We cannot progress until we go back to languages and master the art of linguistics,” said Dr Haq while delivering a lecture on “Ibn Khaldun: from metaphysics to sociology”, at the Trust for Voluntary Organizations.

The lecture had been organized by the Council of Social Sciences Pakistan.

Dr Haq said the main flaw in the approach of Pakistani scholars was their ideological positions, which had converted history into mere expression of ideologies and made it irrelevant to the present.

He said in Pakistan even those people had written about Ibn Khaldun who did not know Arabic or Persian. He said many scholars here still believed that no prominent Muslim scholars appeared after Ghazali, which was a wrong impression because a number of great names including Ibn Khaldun had appeared much later after the death of Ghazali in the 15th century.

Elaborating the influence of ideological position on history, he said according to history, Newton was a person who possessed intellect, but suffered from many human weaknesses simultaneously. However, it was the ideological position that made him a perfect hero free of any human weaknesses.

Dr Haq said Pakistanis were still so much influenced by the West that had the late Nusrat Fateh Ali not been appreciated by the western media after his performance in Paris, he might not have achieved his present status in the country.

He said ideological positions had also twisted the images of great Muslim scholars including Ibn Khaldun.

He said Ibn Khuldun had many positive aspects and at the same time, he suffered from negative syndrome as well when placed in his sociological and historical perspective.

The sociologist said Ibn Khaldun was “the father of sociology” since he explained the entire range of human behaviour and the whole spectrum of cultural achievements in terms of basic human instincts and not in terms of metaphysics.

Among these instincts were the instincts to preserve one’s self and one’s livelihood and also to expand the source of livelihood. He said Ibn Khaldun was of the view that humans were animals and if left free to get carried away only by their instincts, they would eat each other at one time.

Dr Haq said Khuldun had called self-preservation and group- feeling as “Asabiyya”, which, he said, was also necessary for cohesion of any society.