Is education really the answer?

A recent Pakistani voice in America once again brought my attention to the state of education in Pakistan. In every street of the country, there are stories of children from poor, serving class families attempting to gain education and improve themselves against all odds. Meanwhile government funding and foreign aid is going to non-existent education for the public. The plague of ‘ghost schools’ has drawn a great amount of media attention over the years, but continues to gnaw at our economy.

Teachers and social workers in Pakistan frequently stress the importance of educating our population. The Prime Minister and the Education Task Force have declared an ‘education emergency’ and 2011 is being celebrated as the year of education. It is safe to say that education is being viewed as the first and foremost solution to Pakistan’s problems.

I am hesitant to agree with this view. I do not feel that spreading our current education will be as magical as we are led to believe. Before I raise my concerns, let me clarify a few things so that I am not misunderstood. I completely agree with and support the right of every human being to improve themselves and strive for a better, happier life. I also understand and appreciate the sentiments of charitable people who help educate the serving class. I condemn the bleeding of our resources via ghost schools and phantom publishers and agree that this must stop.

Having said all this, I do not believe that achieving the said objectives will rid us of intolerance, extremism, racism, or poverty. A closer look at our textbooks and teachers suggests that there is a predisposition in existing curriculum to cultivate and promote partisan, divisive and intolerant thinking. According to UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2011, textbook content and production in Pakistan is negatively influenced by political and elite actors (p. 5).

It also stresses the importance of each individual teacher’s method of instruction and resulting political or religious undertones. The curriculum was revised after 2001 for being intolerant and glorifying war and Jihad, focusing on identity conflicts such as those between Shia and Sunni or Hindu and Muslim. While this reform means that future generations will be subjected to comparatively less venom, it does indicate that parents and teachers who graduated more than 10 years ago were victims of miss-education. One can hope that most elders have evolved their thinking enough to break free of all the propaganda based education system, but the persistence of identity-based stereotypes and targeted violence indicate otherwise.

Even the current curriculum is far from perfect and needs to be made further conducive to critical thinking and tolerance. This is elaborated by the way much of our educated youth still buys into the “they are all out to destroy Pakistan” mentality blaming even internal failures on foreign agencies.

So before we attempt to mass-market our product, we must refine it, or else enhance it. Mohammad Ziauddin, executive editor of The Express Tribune suggests that tolerance be taught as a separate subject. Wise words of a wise man.

Yet, even if we were able to achieve this utopia of an educated Pakistan, would that really be the best state of affairs? If we got one magical wish, would we really wish for every Pakistani to be educated? Or would it be smarter to wish for a smaller population? Our economy has a large and abundant service sector. Cheap servants are a norm, a luxury and an addiction for most urban households. Our exported products sell in the global arena because we produce at lower costs. Abundant and cheap labor is our competitive edge.

Now imagine that each and every person was technically skilled and educated. Would we be able to provide them with enough deserving jobs? Or would we be a nation of underemployed graduates with unhealthy self-images? According to the CEO of a local bank, “We simply do not have the resources to provide 170million citizens with basics like electricity, clean water and gas, let alone a quality lifestyle.” Perhaps entrepreneurship is the answer, but until and unless investor confidence is restored in the country that harbored Osama Bin Laden, this too remains a limited outlet.

Christopher Hitchens (2007) notes that when human beings are densely populated over limited ground and resources, they become more aggressive, competitive and uncivilized. The trait we share most closely with pigs. Yet, in low populations and relatively abundant resources, a more civilized and ‘humane’ behavioral trend is noticed. Perhaps that would explain our crime rates.

The day we have reformed our education system and permanently silenced the expression “Khuda ulaad deta hai to rizak bhi deta hai” (When God gives a child, he also provides the relevant food/income) will be the day I dare to dream again for a developing Pakistan. Until then, with the prevailing policies, the best you can hope for is an underpaid servant with a PhD in hospitality.

PORK: The Final frontier

I have long been baffled by the abundance of Muslims who drink and copulate but refuse to eat pork in any form. While I have come to believe (after exhaustive debates) that it is almost impossible to convince the majority to even try a bite of fried bacon with their egg, I do wish to put these various ‘sins’ in comparative context.

Whether or not you chose to vary your degree of indulgence after reading this, I do hope that you will at least be more mindful of the nature of these transgressions. I will primarily quote texts from the Quran, since the authenticity of Hadith, even Sahih Bukhari, proves to be ‘questionable’ when in contrast with personal beliefs

Drinking:

Let’s take a look at the verses prohibiting drinking:

“They ask you [Prophet] about intoxicants and gambling: say, "There is great sin in both, and some benefit for people: the sin is greater than the benefit.” (Quran 2:219)

This doesn’t seem too harsh, it seems to admit that drinking can be fun but maintains that the sin is heavier. A much sterner plea comes in chapter 5, verses 90 and 91:

“O believers! Wine and gambling and idols and divining arrows are only unclean things, a work of devil (Satan) then save yourselves from them, so that you may prosper.”

“The devil desires only to create enmity and hatred among you by means of intoxicants and games of chance, and to keep you back from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer. Will you then refrain?”

If you trust Sahih Bukhair, then this would also be of relevance:

Volume 8, Book 81, Number 764: Narrated Anas bin Malik:

“The Prophet beat a drunk with palm-leaf stalks and shoes. And Abu Bakr gave (such a sinner) forty lashes.”

Eating pork or non-halal chicken? Is there a difference?

Well not really, but since so many people have managed to force/create one, I must be missing something. Quranic verses prohibit both things in the same breath:

“He has only made unlawful to you the Carrion, and blood and the flesh of swine and the animal that has been slaughtered by calling a name other than Allah. But he who is driven by necessity, eat neither desiring not, exceeding the need then there is no sin on him, no doubt, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.” (2:173)

The same principle is repeated in (5:3), (6:145) and (16:115) with the addition of dead meat and a few methods of killing.

Friends with benefits?

An increasingly popular ideology among ‘partial sinners’ seems to be that copulation without the institute of marriage is acceptable. What two adults choose to do with each other in the privacy of their home should not anyone else’s business, right? WRONG! When it comes to eating and biting, doing so to satisfying your carnal hunger seems to provoke the most anger.

“The man and the woman guilty of fornication , flog each of them (with) a hundred stripes, and let not pity for them detain you from obedience to Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day, and let a party of believers witness their chastisement.” (Quran 24:2)

“And those of your women guilty of lewdness; take the evidence of four males from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some (other) way.” (Quran 4:15)

“And come not near Zina. Lo! It is an abomination and an evil way.” (Quran 17:32)

I would also recommend reading Chapter 24 verses 2-8. It deals with the production of four witnesses to enforce these laws (sometimes argued as a basis to nullify these verses altogether). Inability to produce witnesses can result in 80 lashes, and a husband can apparently be equivalent to four witnesses.

Conclusion:

Whatever arguments are strung around the enforcement of these various laws, the fact remains that they are the laws dictated in the Quran. For a Muslim who claims to hold this as the unchanged word of the Creator of the universe, it should be clear that sex is a far greater sin then eating pork. And no more sinful then eating non-halal chicken. To be fanatically meticulous about one specific ‘sin’, while happily persisting with others of equal or greater magnitude is a curious act. Is it really a matter of faith and morality? Or is it just popular culture being inherited?

So if you happen to wake up in a beloved’s arms and refuse to have bacon for breakfast, I hope that you will at least pause to reconsider.