Educated Gangsters

Human being, as it is supposed to be, is a constantly learning machine, focusing on its environment and keeping the process of learning in one way or another, till the very end. Individuals of a social order owe their existence and workability not only to the academic and formal education provided but also on the informal education or in other words, their experience. Thus when we contemplate about a social paradigm, not only academic theories and hypotheses should be considered, one should also take care of the historical experiences or observations so as to come to a workable and positive conclusion. A solution solely based upon academic theories is either impractical or is certain to fail as academics only is unable to fathom the diversity of human nature and social behaviours. Similarly, while a system is being followed, there are events and facts that may ring bells for the people to realize if they are working on the right path or the wrong one. Thus it is obligatory for a student of social behaviours to keep a close eye on events happening around him, so as to draw constructive conclusions.

One of the most important events of the year 2011 was London riots, a series of events, which attracted extensive and worldwide media coverage. People watched in shock and Britain’s Governmental institutions groaned in awe and despair, as the young Brits vandalised and torched their own very Capital and other cities of Central and Northern England. The riots were controlled only after a crackdown, thousands of arrests and a police-state type of baton play by the Government forces. Even foreigners were killed in the destruction that had engulfed the mostly-urban areas and was a major source of concern for families having their loved ones in Great Britain for studying or any other purposes. After the situation was contained, thousands of people were tries in the courts, allegedly even for ‘misuse of social networks, and were fined or jailed to straighten them up.

After this entire hullabaloo, the event became a question. The question was, that how on earth was the mind-set of the British youth changed to so much destruction ,that even being one of the most educated lot in the world, they became a third world mob set around lighting their very own markets and malls? Normally, when a group of angry protesters or a band of disgruntled factory workers does the same in any poor country, the trend is ascribed to their poverty and intolerance arising from their being uneducated. But the young Brit vandals were mostly neither that poor so as to yearn for a living, nor they were uneducated. Ti explain this question, many explanations were put forward. Financial Crunch, frustration due to unemployment and many other explanations were given to explain even in some cases advocate for the cause which led to scenes unfathomable for a country like England in years. What we need to observe is, that if British education system is unable to tell people their social duties and control their frustrations in case of a chaotic situation, is it a successful education system? Or is it even an education system at all?

The answer is a bitter truth. The British system of education was unable to realize in the minds of their youth the social duties an individual has for the society, and consequently this is the key system that has to be held responsible for the devastating events that took place. Putting it straight forward, if the social duties of an individual and respect and honour of other people’s property had been institutionalized in the minds of the British pupils in the past, there would definitely be less carnage and destruction, no matter what was the cause in the perspective. Imparting information is not education. Education is to implant all the necessary components to an individual so as to build a complete and dynamic personality for the betterment of the society. If only information is being flown into an individual with none or very less emphasis on character building, this will result in a bio-mechanical robot programmed to achieve anything it desires at all costs. The concept that laws of a country can contain this kind of social chaos is unrealistic. Laws are actually formulated to keep people streamlined or in this paradigm, the criminal laws and punishments are formulated to keep people astray from committing a crime by generation of fear of punishment. But a mind which becomes corrupt, or in other words which has no respect or character so as to take into account dignity of other people’s choices and property, these laws become just liabilities or obstacles to be dexterously avoided and cleverly evaded. Thus in an education system which just relies upon flow of information as its basic purpose  with no emphasis on character and social responsibilities, there is a constant generation of highly intelligent and overwhelmingly clever criminals. Under a social downturn, everyone educated in this way may start attacking everyone else, thus generating more chaos which actually formed the basis of London riots under the pretext of the killing of one man by the police. Not everyone was protesting the death of the person, neither was destruction of life and property any goo way of protesting. Neither was everyone protesting the death of that individual, nor is the extermination of public life and property any explainable or educated way to protest.

Regrettably, albeit all these shortcomings and ineffectiveness in generation of a good individual by this kind of Education system, our country walks on the same pattern as defined by the British social pundits. And the result is more than obvious: We have an extremely educated lot with a disdain from our culture, society and traditions. Unscrupulous in ways and crooked in thinking a hooligan culture is taking birth in the educated streets of our urban household. In a number of street robberies, educated and most importantly, sons of influential and lavish families have been found involved whose background education is sometimes mind boggling to even believe they are criminals. If scarcity of education is producing criminals and terrorists, this kind of information flow is resulting in generation of materialistic hooligans. This is the hour of the need that our social pundits learn from experience and at once start redefining our syllabi and curricula so as to inculcate and institutionalise sense of social responsibility, human sympathy and dignity in the students’ minds. Otherwise, as they say about Pakistani people, this is already an inflammable liquid and in an event of social disorder, even the most educated will become the most violent and the hypothesis that education teaches tolerance will be licking the feet of vandalism.

The Islamic Culture

It’s a well known fact that the Western media has created a thick wall of misinformation between the Muslim and the Western world. People are made to believe in the West that Muslims are generally quite intolerant, illiterate and extremist. They are told about a number of practices going on in the Muslim world that are against the basic human rights. Keeping in view the Pakistani society, the most obviously inhumane act is ‘honor killing’; killing a family member (mostly women) in the name of honor. This practice is only found in some tribal areas of Pakistan adjacent to Afghanistan, but the act is so violent that even sporadic murders of this sort attract a lot of media attention. There are many more examples of such acts around the Muslim world that go against the human rights, for example, genital mutilation of women in some North African countries.

The problem is that such practices exist mainly due to low literacy rates. The only way to exterminate these customs is by educating the population, especially in the tribal areas, but governments of the countries where such customs exist are rarely interested in educating their people.

Condemning such acts is very natural, and that’s what the Western media does, but there is something that is put into the minds of people by the media that isn’t natural, rather its quite fabricated, and that is the perception that such practices are dominant in ‘Islamic societies’ or these practices come from Islamic teachings. Ideally speaking, the actions of a Muslim should depict the teachings of Islam, but unfortunately this is rarely the case. So, blaming religion for every nonsense custom being practiced by Muslims is not something very wise, because the world is not that much ‘ideal’. There is a clear difference between religion and culture. Religion is same around the Muslim world, but culture is different in every Muslim country and most of the cultural practices date back to the ‘dark ages’ when Islam was not even introduced. 

A recent example of such event is the murder of three girls by a Canadian ‘Muslim’. He killed his daughters because they were indulged in some ‘unchaste’ activities with a Pakistani boy. As soon as the news became public, people started cursing Islam for its atrocities against women, but no one thought for a moment that the Canadian Muslim is an Afghan immigrant. The practice of killing women in the name of honor comes from the tribal culture of Afghanistan, not from Islam. According to Islamic jurisprudence the man would have been charged with murder as has been done by the Canadian judiciary. Everything that belongs to the Afghan, Pakistani or Middle Eastern culture doesn’t necessarily belong to Islam. Certainly it’s a greater dishonor for a Muslim to kill a woman than to let her go with a ‘Pakistani boy’. But for a narrow minded Afghan tribesman it might not be so. 

The problem is that many Muslims value their culture more than their religion and they haven’t let Islam change their customs and traditions that have roots in the dark ages. Islam is not against every cultural aspect of a nation or tribe, but it obliges people to redefine their culture on the basis of fundamental Islamic principles. So, Islam is not a threat to any culture, but it doesn’t condone any inhumane practice belonging to any culture as well. If people let their culture overcome their religion then it’s not the fault of religion if their cultural practices are inhumane. 

The solution is education, and that is not limited to the professional education, but people also need to learn about their religion so that they can live according to it. The interesting but unfortunate thing is that most of the Muslims are ignorant of Islam. They have never been taught about their religion through any authentic source. Rarely any Muslim country has a system to acquaint its people with the teachings of their religion. Today Muslims are being despised by the whole world because they don’t act like Muslims. Terrorism, extremism, intolerance and all other negative attitudes that are today found in some Muslim societies are the same attitudes against which the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) struggled throughout his life. Western media won’t be much of a problem for Muslims if someday they themselves realize their own shortcomings and learn to follow their religion earnestly.

Rule of the People

It’s considered a very obvious fact that the Western nations are the flag bearers of democracy. They were the first to invent it, implement it and spread it to rest of the world. As everyone knows, democracy is the rule of people instead of a monarch, dictator or regime. In simple terms, in a perfect democracy the people would be the government. The policies of the government would be outlined according to the opinion of the people and not of only a ruling elite and if its not so, it wouldn’t be a “Demo-cracy” at all.

Usually it is considered a taboo to critically analyze the western democracy, but apparently there is no real harm in doing so.

If the Western countries have got a prefect democracy, the policies of their governments would reflect the opinion of the masses. But some serious questions arise from this hypothesis. For example if we analyze the American democracy that is supposed to be the most successful and perfect democracy of the world, was it the people’s will to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki? If someone says yes then it won’t be fair. A whole nation can never be so cruel to eliminate well populated cities off the globe. So, if it wasn’t the will of the people, whose will was it? The most apparent answer is the American government. That means the American government did something, and that was not just something, it was a huge crime against humanity, which was against the will of the Americans. Why is then the American system of government known as ‘Democratic’? If the actions of the American government are not regulated by the opinion and will of the American nation then what type of democracy is this?

Some would argue that it was a historic mistake by the American government. Yes, it could be, after all governments are run by human beings and not by angels. But how many times can a mistake be repeated? Maybe two times, or three or maybe four, and keeping in view the gravity of the mistake, it’s not supposed to be repeated even once. But what happened in the past decade? USA invaded three countries (Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya), is still invading one country (Pakistan) and apparently its planning to invade two more (Syria and Iran). All these invasions resulted in the death of thousands of human beings and fetched no significant results. Doesn’t the belief that American government follows the perfect democratic principles makes the Americans look like a Viking Nation?

As a matter of fact the Americans aren’t as blood thirsty as their government. But if they’re not, how the American government justifies its crimes against humanity in front of its people? American system is a perfectly democratic one; it’s neither a monarchy nor a fascist state. So, certainly the voice of the people counts, but that again leads to the ‘Viking Nation’ impression.

So, what’s the problem with American democracy?

Of course an American knows the best about the problems of his/her system of government, but the victims of the American aggression can also realize some of the problems that the Americans themselves might not be able to spot. America is a completely democratic state, but that is limited only to the system. In actual the policies are made by a small number of people in power and then they just mould the public opinion according to their policies. A real democratic system is supposed to work the other way round, which means the opinion of the people should have been the guideline for policy making. So the actual problem is that the American democracy is working in the opposite direction, at least as far as its foreign policy is concerned. A peaceful nation is forced to condone the violent acts of its government, by feeding them with false information and using the filter of biased media to shape their perception.

America is just an example, this is happening in most of the Western countries that are involved in long and futile wars. All this warmongering can stop if someday the Western nations realize how their democracy has been hijacked by a bunch of influential people who are continuously committing crimes against humanity and are building a wall of hatred between the Western and Muslim world.