India/western Sociology

[acharya]

East or west

Ali Hashmi

dissects Imran Khan's views on materialism and religion and argues that we should end our search for a messiah

Imran Khan: from international cricketer and heartthrob to a confused politician

Afriend recently forwarded me an article written by our national cricketing hero and philanthropist, Imran Khan, called ‘Why the west craves materialism and the east sticks to religion.’ It is prominently posted on several Islamic websites and is an unabashed (and ill-informed) defence of religious orthodoxy with some awkward and factually inaccurate jabs at Science and Reason.

Mr. Khan has gained considerable respect for his philanthropic work, primarily as the driving force behind the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital and Trust which has been doing great work for cancer patients for many years. On the surface, his essay is a description of his origins and evolution from an upper middle class family in Lahore, educated at a posh private school, and then in England, to international cricketer and heartthrob, onward to sober politician, dedicated philanthrophist and, it would seem, budding Maulana. Early on, he attacks Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection as ‘half-baked’, which, with our current state of knowledge, is like calling the theory of gravity half-baked. This point was addressed in some detail in a rejoinder by Dawn columnist Irfan Husain in a piece entitled ‘Imran Khan vs Charles Darwin’.

Mr. Khan correctly points to the horrors of the Inquisition, supervised by Christian religious orthodoxy at the time, as having left a lasting impression on Western civilization and reinforced the notions of a secular society, i.e. one where organized religious orthodoxy would not have a direct say in matters of state. He fails to mention (or does not know) that it was, in fact, the development of the scientific method (which he maligns repeatedly), that eventually broke the hold of the clergy on public life, and allowed for the Renaissance, the Christian Reformation and the Enlightenment to lay the foundations of modern Western society as it exists today. Also, with the descent of Europe into the dark ages following the fall of the Roman Empire around the 5th century CE, it was the still young and dynamic new religion from Arabia whose rulers actively encouraged their philosophers, intellectuals, scientists and physicians to collect all known knowledge around the world at the time in their libraries and places of learning, critique it, analyze it and develop new ideas. This was the time of the leading lights of Islamic learning, men of towering intellect such as Ibn Seena, Al-Farabi, Al-Kindi and others. These were the people who kept the light of knowledge alive during Europe’s dark ages and allowed the beginning of the renaissance in the 13th century. This is all described in some detail in Dr. Pervaiz Hoodbhoy’s book: ‘Religious orthodoxy and the battle for rationality’.

Mr. Khan talks about humans having to be ‘intellectually convinced’ of an argument instead of being ‘drilled’. In fact this argument flows logically when humans, in our typical fashion, hold themselves above the natural world they live in instead of as part and parcel of it. Behavioural science, beginning with the experiments of Pavlov a hundred years ago, has proven that, in fact, behaviour can be easily ‘drilled’ by sufficient repetition and motivation.

Mr. Khan’s repeated invocations of supernatural interventions notwithstanding, his own evolution into what he describes as a ‘world class athlete’ would never have been possible if his entire effort revolved around praying to the Almighty to make him a better player. The application of scientific methods of training, nutrition, rehabilitation and conditioning played a substantial part in both his success as well as his career’s longevity, allowing him to play and succeed long after most of his contemporaries, who were not as dedicated as he was, had faded into insignificance. Here too, he of all people, should appreciate the role ‘drilling’ played in his success. It is now an elementary principle of sports science that repetition and practice, within physiological bounds, is the key to developing ‘muscle memory’, so crucial to peak performance at the highest level. In addition, his bashing of science seems a little churlish given that without the technologies of electronics, television and the mass media, he would have remained just another obscure player playing a colonial sport that a large part of the world did not know or care about.

Does the East have a ‘superior family life’ as he insists? This assertion dovetails nicely with the ranting of Christian fanatics here in the US who are forever extolling the virtues of family and periodically being arrested for child abuse and homosexuality. Of course the family system in Europe, North America and all industrialized countries has changed, in some cases to the detriment of children and single parents. However, does the ‘extended family’ of Pakistan and other developing countries, a result primarily of economic factors, not present its own problems and challenges? I am of course referring to comfortable middle class families and not to the unfortunate poor and destitute who are still being tortured by barbaric feudal and tribal family relations. including honour killings, wife burnings and the like.

He poses two philosophical questions to science and finds it wanting. What is the purpose of existence and what happens after death? Science has never concerned itself with the first, because as a collection of a body of evidence about the material world of nature, it does not involve itself with the metaphysical or supernatural. The first question has always been the purview of philosophy, and has been answered many times by philosophers, both of a religious and non-religious bent. The same applies to the second question. Of course science has answered what happens to us after death. Our physical shells rejoin the earth which gave birth to them. What happens to the ‘soul’, the ‘spirit’, ‘ruh’, etc? Again, this is outside the purview of science but has been answered many times by others.

Mr. Khan finds the roots of all morality in religion, ignoring (or oblivious) of the fact that morality predates religion, and organized religion, especially as he describes it, is a very recent phenomenon in history. Human kind’s presence on the planet dates back millions of years, but only in the relatively very recent past have humans begun organizing their beliefs into formal religious rituals and practices. There are several sources to consult on this for the interested reader but a good start would be Mr. Ali Abbas Jalalpuri’s ‘Aam Fikri Mughaltay’ (Common Intellectual Falsehoods).

Mr. Khan alludes to the lack of racial tension in Pakistan, ignoring the vicious ‘class persecution’ of the poor, forever consigned to toil in misery so the few rich and influential can live in obscene opulence. He also chooses to ignore the persecution of religious minorities and those arbitrarily deemed infidels (Ahmadis, Shias etc). He acknowledges that Western countries provide more rights to their citizens, whatever their ethnicity or religion, but fails to connect this to industrial development which leads to employment, education and all the associated social relations. Justice and the rule of law, his party’s main platforms, are admirable goals, but these abstract concepts are built on the foundation of economic relations i.e. the means that people utilize to secure food and shelter. It cannot be otherwise. Until Pakistan and other ‘developing’ countries break the stranglehold of large landholders and transnational corporations by developing indigenous industry to wean themselves off foreign ‘aid’, and then use that self-reliance to develop a strong education system which will lead logically to stronger institutions like the judiciary, they cannot hope to uplift large sections of their populations out of poverty and misery.

We do not have to look far. Our neighbours to the East and Northeast, India and China, have adopted differing approaches but are achieving similar results and stand poised on the threshold of joining the West and ultimately supplanting it as world powers. We can either choose to take a similar path, or continue playing the role of agents in the pay of Western powers. One of the symptoms of a colonised mentality is hope in a ‘strong leader’, an ‘ultimate rescuer’ or messiah. History’s experiments with that approach have been a resounding failure, and hundreds of millions have paid with their blood, including our forefathers. Let us be those who learn from History rather than those condemned to repeat it.

The author is a graduate of King Edward Medical University, Lahore and a practicing Psychiatrist in Arkansas, USA