THE NEW PAKISTANI PREMIER IMRAN KHAN

I received the following article, purportedly written by Imran Khan, the new Pakistani Premier. The article was preceded by the following comment :

"This article by Imran Khan appeared on Arabnews; a leading English daily in Saudi Arabia -A REAL EYE OPENER which communicates real feelings of many a true Muslims in these trying & tested  times."

So Muslims are facing trying and tested times?  

How sad. My comments are in blue.

 

THE PAKISTANI CRICKETER IMRAN KHAN

Why The West Craves Materialism & Why The East Sticks To Religion

 

By Imran Khan

  

(OSTB : I beg to differ. The same religions are found in the East and the West for example Christianity. The East is actually more materialistic than the West. Its just that the East is lazier and less clever than the West - for now. So they are less productive. When you are less productive then you have less material wealth. But they substitute this shortcoming with religion and culture - which are 100% materialistic. Dont forget - no money no religion. If you do not pay the priest, the mullah, the guru for his services they will ask you to go and jump in the nearest well.  No money no religion.)

My generation grew up at a time when colonial hang up was at its peak. Our older generation had been slaves and had a huge inferiority complex of the British. The school I went to was similar to all elite schools in Pakistan.   Despite gaining independence, they were, and still are, producing replicas of public schoolboys rather than Pakistanis.

(OSTB : If you suffer a backward and less civilised culture and traditions then you should feel inferior. The problem starts when you CANNOT SEE that you are less civilised. The question is how long does it take for you to dump your less civilised cultures and traditions?)

I read Shakespeare, which was fine, but no Allama Iqbal - the national poet of Pakistan. The class on Islamic studies was not taken seriously, and when I left school I was considered among the elite of the country because I could speak English and wore Western clothes.

(OSTB : They got it right on the Islamic Studies. That is why Imran Khan was saved.)

Despite periodically shouting 'Pakistan Zindabad' in school functions, I considered my own culture backward and religion outdated. Among our group if any one talked about religion, prayed or kept a beard he was immediately branded a Mullah.

(OSTB :  Nowadays many will be proud to be branded a mullah.)

Because of the power of the Western media, our heroes were Western movie stars or pop stars. When I went to Oxford already burdened with this hang up, things didn't get any easier. At Oxford, not just Islam, but all religions were considered anachronism.

(OSTB :  Making movie stars heroes shows lack of reading and knowledge. Oxford is a very very Islamic university.)

Science had replaced religion and if something couldn't be logically proved it did not exist. All supernatural stuff was confined to the movies. Philosophers like Darwin, who with his half-baked theory of evolution had supposedly disproved the creation of men and hence religion, were read and revered.

(OSTB : Darwin "half baked"? Darwin presents a method. Not the final conclusion. Darwin's genius is his method. WE are still working on the conclusion. For example single ancestor versus (click here)  Multiple Origins of Life  ??)

Moreover, European history reflected its awful experience with religion. The horrors committed by the Christian clergy during the Inquisition era had left a powerful impact on the Western mind.

To understand why the West is so keen on secularism, one should go to places like Cordoba in Spain and see the torture apparatus used during the Spanish Inquisition. Also the persecution of scientists as heretics by the clergy had convinced the Europeans that all religions are regressive.

(OSTB : It was Modernisation. Secularisation equals Modernisation. Modernisation equals Islam. Secularisation also equals Islam. Religion means d_mb craps. Islam is not religion. Dont get confused.)

However, the biggest factor that drove people like me away from religion was the selective Islam practiced by most of its preachers. In short, there was a huge difference between what they practiced and what they preached. Also, rather than explaining the philosophy behind the religion, there was an overemphasis on rituals.

(OSTB : This is because their religion is fake. Falsehood.)

I feel that humans are different to animals. 

(OSTB :  Wow. What an observation. I feel that way too. I just cant make Jane our pooch, understand  economics.)

While, the latter can be drilled, humans need to be intellectually convinced. That is why the Qur'an constantly appeals to reason. The worst, of course, was the exploitation of Islam for political gains by various individuals or groups.

Hence, it was a miracle I did not become an atheist. The only reason why I did not was the powerful religious influence my mother wielded on me since my childhood. It was not so much out of conviction but love for her that I stayed a Muslim.

(OSTB : Putting it another way, he is an atheist but he loves his mum.)

However, my Islam was selective. I accepted only parts of the religion that suited me. Prayers were restricted to Eid days and occasionally on Fridays, when my father insisted on taking me to the mosque with him.

All in all I was smoothly moving to becoming a Pukka Brown Sahib. After all I had the right credentials in terms of school, university and, above all, acceptability in the  English aristocracy, something that our brown sahibs would  give their lives for. So what led me to do a 'lota' on the Brown Sahib culture and instead become a  'desi'?

Well it did not just happen overnight.

Firstly, the inferiority complex that my generation had inherited gradually went as I developed into a world-class athlete. Secondly, I was in the unique position of living between two cultures. I began to see the advantages and the disadvantages of both societies.

In Western societies, institutions were strong while they were collapsing in our country. However, there was an area where we were and still are superior, and that is our family life. I began to realize that this was the Western society's biggest loss. In trying to free itself from the oppression of the clergy, they had removed both God and religion from their lives.

(OSTB : Well in my country Serambi Maksiat claims to be religious but they have high rates of divorce, sex outside marriage, gang rape,  incest (sumbang mahram), buang bayi (infanticide),  single mothers (ibu tunggal), husbands abandoning wives (suami lari),  polygamy (ayah kahwin tiga),  child marriage (ayah kahwin budak 11 tahun), HIV, drug addiction etc. Their family life has already been destroyed.  In this regard they have outstripped the West.)

While science, no matter how much it progresses, can answer a lot of questions - two questions it will never be able to answer: One, what is the purpose of our existence and two, what happens to us when we die?

(OSTB :  Correction. Even "religion" cannot answer what is the purpose of our existence. As for the second question, it is so easy. After we die our body decays and we become food for the worms. Or we become ash if our dead bodies are incinerated. In both cases the atoms and molecules in our bodies get recycled. In Nature absolutely nothing is lost.   If you are wondering about the "soul" well there is no such thing as a soul. Or a spirit. Has anyone seen a spirit yet?)

It is this vacuum that I felt created the materialistic and the hedonistic culture. If this is the only life then one must make hay while the sun shines - and in order to do so one needs money. Such a culture is bound to cause psychological problems in a human being, as there was going to be an imbalance between the body and the soul.

(OSTB : If you sleep with FOUR girlfriends that is hedonistic, promiscuous. If you marry your FOUR girlfriends, it instantly becomes HALAAAAL. If you visit the prostitute for one hour that is hedonistic, promiscuous. If you kahwin mutaah (mutaah marriage) or kahwin misyar (travellers marriage) or engage in jihaad nakahah (sex jihad)   for one, two or three hours that is HALAAAL.)

Consequently, in the US, which has shown the greatest materialistic progress while giving its citizens numerous rights, almost 60 percent of the population consult psychiatrists. Yet, amazingly in modern psychology, there is no study of the human soul. Sweden and Switzerland, who provide the most welfare to their citizens, also have the highest suicide rates. Hence, man is not necessarily content with material well being and needs something more.

(OSTB :  Maybe 100% of the citizens in religious countries seriously need to see a psychiatrist too, specialising in delusional psychology. But they do not study enough science so they do not have enough psychiatrists.)

Since all morality has it roots in religion, once religion was removed, immorality has progressively grown since the 70s. Its direct impact has been on family life. In the UK, the divorce rate is 60 percent, while it is estimated that there are over 35 percent single mothers. 

(OSTB : Well in my country Serambi Maksiat claims to be religious but they have high rates of divorce, sex outside marriage, gang rape,  incest (sumbang mahram), buang bayi (infanticide),  single mothers (ibu tunggal), husbands abandoning wives (suami lari),  polygamy (ayah kahwin tiga),  child marriage (ayah kahwin budak 11 tahun), HIV, drug addiction etc. Their family life has already been destroyed.  In this regard they have outstripped the West.)

The crime rate is rising in almost all Western societies, but the most disturbing fact is the alarming increase in racism. While science always tries to prove the inequality of man (recent survey showing the American Black to be genetically less intelligent than whites) it is only religion that preaches the equality of man.

(OSTB : Err . . .Karachi in Pakistan was among the top murder capitals of the world.) 

Between 1991 and 1997, it was estimated that total immigration into Europe was around 520,000, and there were racially motivated attacks all over, especially in Britain, France and Germany. In Pakistan during the Afghan war, we had over four million refugees, and despite the people being so much poorer, there was no racial tension.

(OSTB : This is not true. Ask the Mohajirs - the Indian Muslim refugees  who moved to Pakistan from India. They have suffered huge amounts of discrimination. The Pashtun Afghans stayed near the Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Non Punjabi Pakistanis like the Baloch suffer much discrimination from the Pujnabi majority.)

There was a sequence of events in the 80s that moved me toward God as the Qur'an says: 'There are signs for people of understanding. 'One of them was cricket. As I was a student of the game, the more I understood the game, the more I began to realize that what I considered to be chance was, in fact, the will of Allah. A pattern which became clearer with time. But it was not until Salman Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses' that my understanding of Islam began to develop.

People like me who were living in the Western world bore the brunt of anti-Islam prejudice that followed the Muslim reaction to the book. We were left with two choices: fight or flight. Since I felt strongly that the attacks on Islam were unfair, I decided to fight. It was then I realized that I was not equipped to do so as my knowledge of Islam was inadequate. Hence I started my research and for me a period of my greatest enlightenment. I read scholars like Ali Shariati, Muhammad Asad, Iqbal, Gai Eaton, plus of course, a study of Qur'an.

I will try to explain as concisely as is possible, what  'discovering the truth' meant for me. When the  believers are addressed in the Qur'an, it always says, 'Those who believe and do good deeds.' In other  words, a Muslim has dual function, one toward God and the other toward fellow human beings.

(OSTB : Err . . .those who are trustworthy - can be trusted (amanu). And do good deeds.)

  

The greatest impact of believing in God for me, meant that I lost all fear of human beings. The Qur'an liberates man from man when it says that life and death and respect and humiliation are God's jurisdiction, so we do not have to bow before other human beings.

(OSTB : Err . . .some major inferiority complex here.  We cannot live without human beings. We must interact with human beings. We must bow to each others' needs. In other words, we must BOW towards the welfare of our fellow humans. We  must care for the human beings. People First.)

Thats all. The rest was too boring. I wish Imran Khan all the best. I wish Pakistan all the best.