Pakistan: Nation lost in translation.

August 14, 2010, has come and gone. Pakistan turned sixty three. With age, and all sixty three years of it, Pakistanis should have long become 'one nation and one people'. Reality check; we are everything and sundry except true blue Pakistanis yet. As a nation, we stand divided and much further apart now then at the Independence, in 1947.

As country, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is neither Islamic nor a republic. In name, it is both -- Islamic as well as republic. A republic is a state without monarch and an Islamic republic means that the constitution of Pakistan to be the Quran or in conformity with the teachings of the Quran. It is neither.

If it was only and truly a republic, Asif Ali Zardari and many like him would never be elected to the office of the President or Prime Minister. He would be in the docks answering a long list of charges against him if not already in the slammer. If it was an Islamic country by a long shot, he would be much worse off.

On paper, we have a democracy of sorts with almost all its institutions in place, like houses of representatives or the assemblies in the provinces and at the centre; and, the senate etc but, in effect, it is dysfunctional Bhutto and Sharif dynasty and not a representative democracy as Americans call their own form of government. Sixty three years on, Pakistan doesn't have a single functional democratic institution to show for; except of course for rampant corruption -- institutionalized.

Today most of Pakistan's leaders and those in the public service or, in other words the public administrators of Pakistan, have all been born after the Independence in 1947. They know the country is going from bad to worse but they have no idea how to steady the ship and get Pakistan out of the mess it is in. They know the religious leaders too well. Pakistan will be worse off in the hands of the mullah.

On the other hand the West and the rest of the non-Muslim world are frustrated with Pakistan and Pakistani Muslims and, even angry due to their lack of understanding of Islam and Muslims in general. They don't know whether the fault is with the followers in Pakistan or the ideology of Islam. Indian Muslims have been spared the brunt of Western wrath since they are covered by the cloak of secular India that is soon-to-be a world power if not already an economic might.

In the back drop of Lockerbie, 9/11 and the recent failed attempt to bomb New York City, westerners are afraid of Muslims and Islam. Two words, terror and terrorists for Pakistani Muslims in particular, are on the tip of everyone’s tongue as any discussion on Islam and Muslims gets underway. Pakistani Muslim minorities in Europe, USA and non-Muslim countries elsewhere have suddenly become suspect and, in extreme cases, a symbol of hate.

On the other hand, Pakistani Muslims all over the world now consider themselves a victim and many are convinced that we are engaged in an undeclared war with the West and the Christians and Jews. The list is expanding as still other countries are taking pre-emptive measures to stop flow of Pakistanis to their shores.

Pakistanis look at the occupation of Afghanistan as America's greed for oil. Mullahs tire themselves speaking of a Christian conspiracy to dismember Islam by influencing actions such as Swiss ban on the construction of minarets, and French ban on burqa in public. It hasn't helped that, in western imagination, the prayer towers of mosques have suddenly transformed from objects of Islamic architecture and design to being symbols of Islamic fundamental tendencies. It didn't help that the Swiss government thought the minaret ban was “not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture." Do you buy that? I don't.

A definite bias against Islam and Pakistan, in that order, has set in the Western minds. It is working its way up and horizontally. Educated western minds in high public offices are easily falling victim to religious pressures coming from their voters. In the past, they didn't have to take notice of it, but the ranks of voters afraid of a ‘fundamentalist Pakistani Muslims’ are swelling.

There is a growing mistrust and, in some pockets even hate, between Muslims and non-Muslims. Yes, it was very much a thing between religions but now the world is just black and white – Muslims vs non-Muslims. The silence of those amongst non-Muslims who would voice their support from time to time has of late been deafening.

If Pakistani Muslims are not fundamentalists and terrorists, what are they? If not an Islamic republic, what is Pakistan really and why it has become what it is in sixty three years since the independence?

The answer to this seemingly difficult question is rather simple and also explains the prevailing state of affairs in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and non-Arabic speaking Muslim countries around the world, including those in the Far East like Indonesia and Malaysia.

First, permit me to tell you how I chanced upon this explanation as to what went wrong in the first place that made Pakistan a check book democracy and a banana republic. On the first of Ramadan, I was in my room across the road from the mosque in Singapore's Little India. I was surfing the Internet with windows of my room wide open. I could hear the Imam delivering a sermon in Arabic on the public address system to the believers who were essentially waiting to break the fast and follow that up immediately with Maghreb prayers.

I remember saying to myself that I didn't understand a word of it. I was quite sure the majority of people in the mosque also wouldn't have understood whatever the Imam was reciting. I asked myself what was the purpose of it all if not to be understood. It also occurred to me that probably the Imam was also not proficient enough in Arabic to understand and be understood perfectly well.

It struck me that the franchise of Islam has neither been properly exported to non-Arabic speaking countries nor did the importers of Islam in those countries did a good job of properly translating and distributing the Quran and Hadith amongst its people. Besides that, formal and proper education of the national language, Urdu, didn't take place all over the country and remains unread, unspoken and misunderstood in many areas outside urban centres in the country; and English is still for the those who can afford it. This was true before the Independence and it still is.

What Vatican is to Christianity, Saudi Arabia should have been the same to Islam and Muslims sans the Pope? However, instead of owning up to its responsibility towards a system of worldwide Islamic education, it simply pushed all the responsibility to the franchisee. Why can't the Saudi government setup a board of Islamic studies and accredit every madarsah, school and religious teacher with it. It is not sufficient to say that Islam is a complete system or way of life when you don’t have an infrastructure in place for Muslims worldwide.

Amongst the Arab countries, I am speaking specially of Saudi Arabia and its ruling elite. They have never bothered to find out how would Islam be received in Pakistan in the twentieth century and beyond when there is no system in place to ensure development of Islamic teaching and human resources? What ought to be the modus operandi for teaching Islamic values to Pakistani Muslims? They didn't think it was at all necessary to communicate in the local languages and present the teachings of the Quran along with its original text in Arabic. Merely, shipping large number of copies, solicited and unsolicited, of Quran in Arabic with translations in English and Urdu was considered a job well done. It isn’t.

Arabs ought to know better since they themselves entered their golden era in science on the back of education based on translated originals obtained from far corners of the world. First, they established a thorough system of education all over the Arab world. That kicked in an insatiable hunger to get knowledge from wherever they could get; for instance, in the 9th century C.E., translated manuscripts of Dioscurides and Galen from Greek formed the basis of further understanding and remarkable developments in pharmacology. Translators were invited to Baghdad, where scientists and researchers studied the past and created the future. Progress followed and Arab science dazzled the world from 750–1258 C.E.

The quest for science started a competition within the Islamic world. The rulers of Islamic Spain, in an attempt to compete with Baghdad, recruited scholars who made contributions of paramount importance to science, medicine, technology, philosophy, and art.

Now the Arabs cannot look beyond their nose. Instead of realising that there is a much bigger world of Muslims outside of the Arabian Peninsula; in Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh and elsewhere, they have divided the world of Islam into Arab and non-Arab. I was very deliberate when I used the words ‘franchise’ and ‘franchisee’ in this essay. Islam is the franchise of the Arabs and those outside the GCC are mere franchisees.

In the absence of no effort or investment by the Saudis on building infrastructure for Islamic education worldwide...none whatsoever, what transpired is now history. An entire nation was brought up on a daily dose of television and Hindi cinema from across the border. Bollywood is popular beyond wildest dreams solely because spoken Hindi is very similar to Urdu and is very well understood amongst the masses. Furthermore, some overzealous individuals took it upon themselves to setup madrasah's and schools to impart Islamic studies according to their own belief and values.

Muslims around the world have no alternative but to turn to Oxford and Cambridge or American system of education at every level. We are happily and readily sending our children to Christian schools everywhere including here in Pakistan. Where is the infrastructure for education that should have long been in place for Muslim children that supports mental and moral development from formative years to prepare them for the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan? In this regard, the teachings of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the establishment of Aligarh is a message long lost on us. More recently, our own late Hakeem Mohammad Saeed started the Hamdard University in Pakistan – an institution of higher learning, research and development. Other enlightened Muslims are doing their own individual bid in education and healthcare.

What is still amiss is an umbrella organisation with a master plan and a road map for infrastructure in Muslim countries all over the world. Give me the education highways or infrastructure and I will give you the Harvard, the Princeton and the Yale of the Islamic world; and, tomorrows ar-Razi, Az-Zahrawi, Ibn Sina, Al-Zarqali and still others.

No man is an island and no nation can live and prosper without a doctrine. The last remaining super power in the world, USA, proclaims In God We Trust, on its dollar bills. It is the only country in the world that wears its faith on its currency. Faith is to believe and Islam is to be understood for the belief to work for the believer.

The Quran is clear: "The scholar’s ink is more sacred than the blood of martyrs". Tell that to a suicide bomber. Don't forget to translate it for him.