We are reaping what we allowed to be sowed......
A doctor who went to my high school in Pakistan was recently murdered by SSP (Sibah-e-Sahabah Pakistan - Soldiers of the Caliphs, Pakistan) - the well known macabre outfit that has made its name in the brutal world of Islamic terrorism. So violent and relentless are their tactics, that they might be aptly referred to as terrorists' terrorist.
SSP is a virulently sunni organization, which has embarked upon genocidal attacks on shia minorities through target killings as well as mass bombing. SSP is also at the nexis of terrorist organizations that have made their business to execute polio vaccination workers in Pakistan. The reason for their obsession with stopping polio vaccination has been explained to me, but it's still not very clear. But such is the nature of deathly ideologies. Raison d'être gets forgotten. Just the killings persist.
This particular doctor was leading a vaccination effort for polio eradication. And he was a shia. So he had two strikes against him. I don't remember this honorable man, but he was doing extremely useful and desperately needed work in Pakistan, one of the last holdouts of polio, a devastatingly deforming and debilitating disease.
In the comments section of a facebook post announcing his murder, an old high school friend quipped on what I would think of this horrendous crime. Some of my high school friends appear intensely curious about my religious and social views. I am a professed atheist, a fact that does not sit well in the highly conformist Pakistani society. And I have been so since the age of 18 when I left high school to go to Karachi for college. Early childhood friends who never saw me during the most formative years of my life, which were the first three of university in Karachi, are often perplexed by my mental evolution.
In Pakistani society where religion is often (confusingly and erroneously) equated with morality, where even the most well educated and enlightened go to incredible lengths of mental gymnastics and pretzel logic to confirm Islam (or their version thereof) with modernity, science, logic and common sense, atheists are often looked down upon as people with some emotional and/or mental shortcoming. Or perhaps misguided souls to be pitied and shown the light again. This is the moderates' outlook. The more religious ones believe they should be killed, as mandated by Islam.
In my initial years of conversion to atheism in Pakistan I was often ridiculed by some as having an identity crisis, unhealthy obsession with western way of life, an aspiring "gora" etc. Incidentally a few of those people themselves after traveling the world, thinking through issues, and essentially "growing up", now question Islam (and all religions) themselves.
Inside the Firehouse
But atheists in Pakistan remain a rare breed. In his epic book "Fooled by Randomness", Nissim Taleb describes the "Fire House Effect". In an experiment, firefighters in a quiet town, without many fires to fight and plenty of time to chat, were analyzed. As these people came from similar socio-economic strata and educational backgrounds, their views generally converged to the same conclusion about social and political issues. And the more they discussed these issues, the more some of their conclusions veered away from reality. In fact in some cases these fire-fighters reached consensus that to most objective outsiders would look to be completely absurd.
In that respect Pakistan is a giant firehouse in its own.
As you sow.....
The post made me think once again. We are reaping what we allowed to be sowed. When I lived in Pakistan, in my later teens, I increasingly came to the conclusion that we might be on a path of self-ruin. Religion seemed to make little sense to me all of a sudden. It started with a simple question, what if every thing I have been told as the reality of life and the universe is just not true? I didn't have any answers, but I spent a few years immersed in books on history and philosophy of religion. I found it astonishing that people in Pakistan (and many other countries) would let their lives being ruled to such an extent by an ideology for whose veracity they had scant evidence. Believing in an Abrahamic God, just because countless other people also believed in it.
I did not know what puts societies on the path of economic development and social progress. But I knew what I saw around me was not logically consistent. I was told that in faith we can't follow our mind, but our heart. This made little sense. Besides my mind I had nothing to follow. The only instrument of perceiving the world and any reality, no matter how obscure, is my mind. Abandoning logic, thinking, and the consequent conclusions is the biggest fraud I could pull on myself. I refused to do that.
Pakistan's middle class is largely religiously moderate, by Islamic countries' standards. But so committed are they to religion and so constant is their reaffirmation of their commitment to Islam, that it has bred an environment where there is no oxygen left for competing ideologies. Only for various degrees of Islamic fervor. This is the environment which breeds fundamentalism. Moderate middle class then tries to exonerate themselves by verbally distancing from the extremists. But they fail to realize they are unwittingly part of a larger support structure that makes extremist religious thought and conduct possible.
SSP is a virulently sunni organization, which has embarked upon genocidal attacks on shia minorities through target killings as well as mass bombing. SSP is also at the nexis of terrorist organizations that have made their business to execute polio vaccination workers in Pakistan. The reason for their obsession with stopping polio vaccination has been explained to me, but it's still not very clear. But such is the nature of deathly ideologies. Raison d'être gets forgotten. Just the killings persist.
This particular doctor was leading a vaccination effort for polio eradication. And he was a shia. So he had two strikes against him. I don't remember this honorable man, but he was doing extremely useful and desperately needed work in Pakistan, one of the last holdouts of polio, a devastatingly deforming and debilitating disease.
In the comments section of a facebook post announcing his murder, an old high school friend quipped on what I would think of this horrendous crime. Some of my high school friends appear intensely curious about my religious and social views. I am a professed atheist, a fact that does not sit well in the highly conformist Pakistani society. And I have been so since the age of 18 when I left high school to go to Karachi for college. Early childhood friends who never saw me during the most formative years of my life, which were the first three of university in Karachi, are often perplexed by my mental evolution.
In Pakistani society where religion is often (confusingly and erroneously) equated with morality, where even the most well educated and enlightened go to incredible lengths of mental gymnastics and pretzel logic to confirm Islam (or their version thereof) with modernity, science, logic and common sense, atheists are often looked down upon as people with some emotional and/or mental shortcoming. Or perhaps misguided souls to be pitied and shown the light again. This is the moderates' outlook. The more religious ones believe they should be killed, as mandated by Islam.
In my initial years of conversion to atheism in Pakistan I was often ridiculed by some as having an identity crisis, unhealthy obsession with western way of life, an aspiring "gora" etc. Incidentally a few of those people themselves after traveling the world, thinking through issues, and essentially "growing up", now question Islam (and all religions) themselves.
Inside the Firehouse
But atheists in Pakistan remain a rare breed. In his epic book "Fooled by Randomness", Nissim Taleb describes the "Fire House Effect". In an experiment, firefighters in a quiet town, without many fires to fight and plenty of time to chat, were analyzed. As these people came from similar socio-economic strata and educational backgrounds, their views generally converged to the same conclusion about social and political issues. And the more they discussed these issues, the more some of their conclusions veered away from reality. In fact in some cases these fire-fighters reached consensus that to most objective outsiders would look to be completely absurd.
In that respect Pakistan is a giant firehouse in its own.
As you sow.....
The post made me think once again. We are reaping what we allowed to be sowed. When I lived in Pakistan, in my later teens, I increasingly came to the conclusion that we might be on a path of self-ruin. Religion seemed to make little sense to me all of a sudden. It started with a simple question, what if every thing I have been told as the reality of life and the universe is just not true? I didn't have any answers, but I spent a few years immersed in books on history and philosophy of religion. I found it astonishing that people in Pakistan (and many other countries) would let their lives being ruled to such an extent by an ideology for whose veracity they had scant evidence. Believing in an Abrahamic God, just because countless other people also believed in it.
I did not know what puts societies on the path of economic development and social progress. But I knew what I saw around me was not logically consistent. I was told that in faith we can't follow our mind, but our heart. This made little sense. Besides my mind I had nothing to follow. The only instrument of perceiving the world and any reality, no matter how obscure, is my mind. Abandoning logic, thinking, and the consequent conclusions is the biggest fraud I could pull on myself. I refused to do that.
Pakistan's middle class is largely religiously moderate, by Islamic countries' standards. But so committed are they to religion and so constant is their reaffirmation of their commitment to Islam, that it has bred an environment where there is no oxygen left for competing ideologies. Only for various degrees of Islamic fervor. This is the environment which breeds fundamentalism. Moderate middle class then tries to exonerate themselves by verbally distancing from the extremists. But they fail to realize they are unwittingly part of a larger support structure that makes extremist religious thought and conduct possible.
Tolerance for intolerance
When I was in college in Karachi, one day at the lunch table someone showed us an article that described plans by one of the mainstream religious organization to set up a madrasah outside Lahore and train pupils, most 14-16 years old, for armed jihad. I was horrified and expressed my anguish. Many did not agree with me. One of the students in MBA-banking program bristled at my comments. Extremely defensive, he vehemently defended the importance of jihad and Islamic education. And this was at the dining table at one of the most progressive universities in Pakistan!
I highly doubt if this future banker would have sent his own kids to a militant madrassah like that, instead of the posh (and westernized) Grammar or American School, where they can get good education, get admitted to top universities, and eventually get flashy jobs in finance, medicine, or consulting. But being a good Muslim he had to defend Islam, and denounce any discourse which even remotely sounded like an assault on anything (no matter how ridiculous) Islamic.
Pakistanis (and many other parts of Muslim world) are obsessed with a utopian Islamic past. A country that has not seen well functioning institutions of democracy or capitalism, they yearn for the glory days of Islam and harbor a strong yet misguided belief that a regression to the true Islamic values will eventually bring economic, political, and personal salvation. And the "Islamic values" they cherish are largely modesty, humility, work ethic, sense of fairness, scientific inquiry, etc. These all all noble qualities, but have little to do with any particular religion. None of us was ever taught about the most fundamental concept of morality in humans, empathy.
Other than that Mrs Lincoln, how was the play....
Another friend commented that other than illiterate classes, Pakistan is doing very well. This is akin to saying that other than criminals and killers society is perfect. It would be if the numbers of illiterates, criminals, and religious extremist were small. They are not.
The overarching and constant presence of religion has created an apologist environment where religious extremism is either tolerated, or brushed aside as the pocket of an insignificant minority. But the minority is not insignificant.
Religion is not the sole source of misery. Many other factors including lack of education, systemic corruption, unending wars etc. are at play. In fact in the greater scheme of things geopolitical legacy might be the biggest hurdle to progress, prosperity, and general happiness. But no factor has been as under appreciated and as frequently swept under the rug as the stifling and oppressive grip of religion in Pakistan. This is the giant elephant in this cramped room that everyone refuses to see.
Dr. Babar's murder unfortunately will also become a small statistic, soon forgotten in a country overwhelmed by such killings. Society will continue to muddle along, with the same archaic beliefs and conspiracy theories about external enemies bent on destroying Pakistan and keeping it away from it's glorious future where it would be the most advanced, prosperous, and just Islamic republic. The drip feed of religion will continue......
Dr. Babar's murder unfortunately will also become a small statistic, soon forgotten in a country overwhelmed by such killings. Society will continue to muddle along, with the same archaic beliefs and conspiracy theories about external enemies bent on destroying Pakistan and keeping it away from it's glorious future where it would be the most advanced, prosperous, and just Islamic republic. The drip feed of religion will continue......
posted by madinmanhattan | 5:18 PM
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