Regimen for self-restraint

RAMAZAN is the month of fasting. The process is apparently strict; you may call it rigorous. Not a drop of water or a grain of food should be allowed to pass down the throat from early dawn until sunset. Yet, millions over millions of Muslims all over the world submit eagerly to this ‘arduous’ exercise.

As the sun sets on the 29th Sha’ban, crowds of all age groups full of excitement gather at open places or on the roofs of houses to scan the western sky for the Ramazan crescent. If sighted it is greeted with a frisson of ecstasy. Greetings are exchanged. Juniors seek blessings from elders. Womenfolk get busy with preparations at home and men get ready for the mosque for ‘tarawih’.

People displaying such enthusiasm for Ramazan are those who wish to please the Lord. If He wants it so, then it should be obeyed without a question for it is a commonplace that a servant must obey the master. Disobedience would invite punishment. Even questioning an order would attract disciplinary action.

Human masters do not explain the policy behind their orders. But Allah volunteers an explanation. Fasting is ordained for Muslims, He declares reassuringly, “as it had been prescribed for people before them.” Further, to demonstrate His solicitude for His servants, He also explains its purpose, which is to teach self-restraint. (2:183). For further emphasis it is mentioned that this is the month in which He “sent down the Quran, as a guide to mankind for guidance and judgment” between right and wrong, vice and virtue, sin and piety (2:185).

Of the three reasons, self-restraint is the most crucial. This is one attribute that only humans can acquire; birds and beasts are beyond its scope. The first benefit that flows from it is a boost to one’s self-respect, as it tends to put one a notch higher than the average even in his personal estimation. To desire to appear different and better than the average, is human nature. The longing finds expression in many ways, from dress and make-up to other, more difficult, feats in diverse fields of activity.

Fasting provides an ideal opportunity for its fulfilment. One who is fasting feels it in his guts that he is different than those who cannot control their desires. Besides, as a form of penance and a means to improve and develop will power, fasting is universally acknowledged and practised in every religion. And, yet to assuage misgivings further, the Quran says, “Allah intends every facility for you; He does not want to put you to difficulties (20:185).” As proof He has limited the abstinence only to the duration of daylight hours. Sunset; and people are free, free to eat and drink what is permissible and enjoy marital happiness. Fasting is deferred for the sick and the travellers and women during their periods. They are permitted to complete the count later. The sick can even feed an indigent for every day of fast that he could not perform (ibid.)

For the exercise of self-control, however, it is essential that there should be a challenge. Easy access to the fulfilment of desires should be available as a test. For the starving poor who often skip meals anyway, fasting would not be any big deal except, maybe for thirst. But thirst can be controlled for a few hours without much stress.

It is for those who have food available aplenty to demonstrate their obedience, gratitude and love for Allah for the bounties He has bestowed on them.

That is why Ramazan fasting was ordained during the second year of the Hijrah. Not earlier. Not in Makkah, where the economic conditions of the Muslims were extremely acute. Often days would pass without a morsel of food. Fasting would have been easier for them in the circumstances to perform. But the purpose was to make it clear that Ramazan fasting is not just about skipping meals. It aims primarily at spiritual overhaul, for which peace and security is sine qua non, and which Muslims in Madina were enjoying by then.

Notably, while there is the possibility of a great reward for those who fast, the converse of a serious loss is also applicable for those who do not. One can compensate for failing to do the usual things in a particular month by doing them any other time during the year. But the loss even of a single day of fasting in Ramazan cannot be compensated, because the exclusive Ramazan ambience cannot be created in any other month.

The reason is not far to seek. More acts of piety are performed in this month than in any other. Although Zakat can be paid any time but Ramazan offers a convenient opportunity to count the year for assessing the nisab (the amount payable).

Three acts are special to Ramazan: tarawih, e’tikaf and fitra. The 20 extra rak’at of tarawih are offered after Isha prayer. In e’tikaf, the person performing it practically cuts himself off from “the surly bonds of earth.” He leaves home and takes his abode in a mosque for the last 10 days of Ramazan. Except for toilet, he would not leave the “cloister,” where he would be engaged most of the time in prayers or dhikr, which includes reciting the Quran. Meals and a few hours of sleep would be the only other breaks. And Fitra is a charity peculiar to Ramazan.

Those who allege that Islam treats women adversely compared with men and who insist on equality between genders, would do well to note that e’tekaf is permissible only for men. Women are exempt from the “inconvenience” it involves.

Lastly, Ramazan offers an ideally convenient opportunity for offering tahajjud. Because people already wake up for sehri snacks at about the tahajjud time, so they would not have to make any extra effort. Tahajjud is a prayer, though not obligatory (farz or wajib), yet one that ranks very high, because it was specially prescribed for the Prophet: “And pray in the small watches of the morning: an additional prayer” (17:79)

All in all, Ramazan is an experience that can be felt; the feeling of serene satisfaction and bliss is too sublime to be conveyed in words.

Economic impact of the disaster

IN a fleeting moment of nature’s anger, lives and properties worth billions were wiped out on October 8.

The sight of thousands of dead, millions rendered homeless and prying the rubble in the hope of finding a loved one alive — not knowing what travails tomorrow will bring in its wake, decomposing corpses on roadsides and wrecked infrastructure being beamed, thanks to modern technology, into billions of homes from minute to minute, has been heart-rending, evoking a spontaneous response not seen in this country in living memory.

The logistics and coordination of the relief effort would have been a huge undertaking for any government but for the present one such a crisis is of gargantuan proportions. Firstly, because of the scale of human misery and the topography of the ravaged areas making one wonder how where the colossal amounts spent on the army by depriving the people of Pakistan of basic social services have gone.

Secondly, partly because of the outpouring of emotions of people wanting to help by getting into the thick of things themselves, but in large measure because of the lack of trust in government to believe that their donations routed through the official machinery would reach the intended beneficiaries. Notwithstanding these issues, the real test of human endurance both at home and among the donor community lies in the future. Can such a momentum be sustained since the task of reconstruction and rehabilitation is going to be a long and painful one, requiring lots of patience and fortitude.

If the past is any guide, the media will soon lose interest in showing the same scenes repeatedly and the plight of those in makeshift camps will disappear from the screens to become history until another disaster strikes somewhere and the competing demands prompt a diversion of resources and result in aid pledges being forgotten. It will be time to move on to another newsworthy event, precisely when its presence will be needed most to oversee reconstruction efforts and the utilization of public funds to prevent money from going into private pockets.

What will be the economic impact, in the short and medium terms, of this tragedy? How will it affect the government’s budget deficit and the growth rate? In the opinion of this writer, the economic impact in the short to medium terms will not be worrisome for the following reasons:

a) The sharp cutback in demand for a range of goods and services by those affected (although their contribution to domestic demand and national growth was small) will largely be neutralized by the heightened demand for certain basic goods being provided through the relief effort — particularly food items like drinking water, dry rations like pulses, sugar, cooking oil, biscuits, etc., thereby maintaining a momentum of growth in the economy.

However, unless some of the food items are imported from abroad (which could worsen the trade deficit unless these goods come in the form of aid), we could witness higher food price. Inflation of this kind would hurt the poor badly in the rest of Pakistan and more so the non-agricultural population in rural areas which has to purchase its food from the market.

b) A large additional demand for some goods like tents, blankets, cotton sheets, etc., and construction materials — like cement, steel and wood products and bricks will push up production in these sub-sectors of industry, thereby stimulating growth.

c) The allocations for aid operations financed from government funds, the compensation that will eventually have to be paid for every dead or injured person plus the cost of restoring some basic communications infrastructure will increase this year’s budget deficit by at least half a percentage point of the GDP, which should be affordable without inflation scaling more frightening heights. The deficit would have had to be raised further but for the overwhelming response of Pakistanis (both at home and abroad) and of the international community and the capacity limits of the system to absorb and efficiently utilize large inflows of funds over the remaining part of the financial year ending June 30, 2006.

In the longer term the issues will be somewhat different and pose serious challenges.

Rehabilitating shattered families and generating economic activity through restoration of the ramshackle infrastructure, considering the half century over which it had been built, will require massive sums of money. If the bulk of this funding is not provided by external sources, the government will have little choice but to increase its budget deficit to much higher levels over the next few years (which will keep the rate of inflation high) unless it can mobilize adequate resources by raising taxes, which is a politically daunting task.

Much as one would like to pin hopes on the present momentum being maintained, the unprecedented levels of private philanthropy will subside quickly and most of the tab will have to be picked up by the government. Despite the goodwill that now exists for Pakistan in the international community, aid fatigue is likely to set in soon. In any case, it is difficult to imagine that donor interest can be sustained to fund not just Pakistan’s on-going and planned development programmes but also a rehabilitation effort of such proportions, unless, of course, some of the other planned projects are shelved.

The restoration of the destroyed infrastructure will be a long haul, partly because of the scale of the task and the volume of resources that will be required, and partly because of the absorptive capacity of the government machinery and the time and effort that will be needed to clear the debris before construction can begin. However, the opportunity that this catastrophe may have created for planned housing and development may be difficult to utilize since the two million displaced by the disaster will not be able to wait for the wreckage to be cleared so that they can build their own homes themselves.

Therefore, while the impact on economic growth and related indicators (barring inflation) is not likely to be serious in the short-term; the long-term requirements for alleviating the pain of this devastation are daunting and their outcomes are uncertain and difficult to predict.

The writer is a former finance minister, Punjab.

The Columbus debate

THESE days, a good word about Christopher Columbus is about as rare as an insult was 100 years ago.

For one thing, there’s the ongoing question of whether a man can really “discover” a continent that is already inhabited. There’s the much-repeated charge that he was only in it for the riches; that he was an imperialist, even that he was the founder of the Atlantic slave trade.

In the 1990s, the city of Berkeley actually gave up celebrating Columbus Day altogether and renamed it “Indigenous People’s Day.”

But whichever way you come down on the Columbus debate, here’s the good news: Columbus Day in the United States is not really about Columbus anyway. Nor is it about 1492; in fact, it’s about 1892, the year President Benjamin Harrison issued the proclamation establishing a day to honour the “400th anniversary of the discovery of America.”

Before that, Columbus wasn’t at the forefront of America’s national mythology. One hundred years earlier, the tercentenary of his landing in the New World had been barely noticed — except in smallish gatherings.

But, by the end of the 19th century, the United States was getting a makeover. Unprecedented immigration had transformed the country’s look overnight; in the 30 years between 1880 and 1910, 18 million newcomers came to this country.

And the immigrants who flooded America’s shores were of a different breed — European, to be sure, but a different kind of European; what in those days were called “Slavs,” “Alpines,” “Hebrews,” “Iberics” or “Mediterranean.” They were swarthy, spoke strange languages and worshipped God differently from the Protestant majority.

At the beginning of the 1880s there were about 300,000 Italians in the US; 10 years later, that number had doubled. And by 1910 there were two million Italians in the US, more than 10% of the nation’s foreign-born population.

The Italians — along with Poles and Portuguese among others — joined a swelling Irish (“Celtic”) community to form a new political bloc: the urban Catholic. Willing to take jobs that white Protestants refused, these urban Catholics met prejudice and suspicion. They constituted a “Catholic menace” — a religious Fifth Column marching to papist orders.

Catholics badly needed a hero. And what better symbol to mobilize and Americanize these immigrants than one of their own? Columbus — discoverer of the New World but born in the Italian port city of Genoa — was a logical choice. As an editorial in the 1878 “Connecticut Catholic” put it, no one was more deserving “of grateful remembrance than the great ”

Anti-Catholic sentiment fulled the establishment of fraternal self-help organizations. On March 29, 1882, Father Michael J. McGivney, the curate at New Haven’s St. Mary’s, set into place the cornerstone for what became the best known of these groups: the Knights of Columbus.

By the time Harrison’s “Discovery Day” came along, it sanctioned the many celebrations already in place. San Francisco’s Italians had celebrated their first Discovery Day in 1869, and in 1876, Philadelphia’s Italians erected a statue of Columbus in that city’s Fairmount Park. Well before the 1892 proclamation, the celebration was already on the calendar in St. Louis, Boston, Cincinnati and New Orleans.

I recently interviewed a 16-year-old Advanced Placement history student. I showed him Harrison’s proclamation and asked what he thought. “Columbus was a rat,” he told me. A rat whose motive was to “just get rich.” Later, when I presented these comments to a group of student teachers, they gushed at the student’s “critical thinking” and his willingness to stare down a presidential proclamation and question Columbus’ motives.

But I much preferred the response I got from a 29-year-old graduate student who immediately noted that the proclamation had been handed down at the beginning of the Progressive era, at a time of intense immigration.

Because that’s what it was about: a changing nation and how we use and reinvent the past to address our present needs. In history, only questions - never conventional wisdom or slogans - pry open the door to critical thinking.—Dawn/Los Angeles Times Service