Reason under siege

In the present phase of our socio-political evolution, we find ourselves in the midst of a fierce battle of conflicting worldviews. Filtering through the prism of a literal, simplistic and coercive view of religion has emerged a strain of faith dedicated to create (re-create, say the faithful) a brave old world where angels defeat the infidels, the miraculous trumps science, violence is an act of faith, and intolerance an affirmation of faith. This surely is an assault on reason, though not the only one.

About a decade or so ago, an enterprising TV channel, in search of popular themes to boost its viewership, came up with the clever idea of playing upon the credulity of the harassed and neglected millions struggling desperately to find some relief from their miseries. Thus began a whole new ball game of tempting the viewers with the lure of the occult and the supernatural, laced with quasi-religious beliefs and practices, where nothing is impossible. This ploy could not but succeed in a society that has always been prone to give credence to myth, magic and superstition. No wonder, therefore, that many TV channels became unabashed popularisers of palmists, astrologers, faith-healers, exorcists of jinns and dispensers of charms and spells.

To compound the consequences of opening up of non-rational avenues of thought, there has emerged the evil of misgovernance that has created an unjust and crime-infested society whose victims are only too willing to explore the world beyond the pale reason to seek justice and revenge. This convergence of the non-rational ways of looking at life and its challenges makes reason a shrinking ingredient of our intellectual matrix, and erodes the rational moorings of society. In fact, there is some evidence that reason has already been dethroned from the commanding heights of the thinking and behaviour of too many people from almost every section of our society. Consider some of the patently insane acts committed not by deranged individuals, but by organised groups of otherwise sane individuals: religious extremists massacre schoolchildren in Peshawar and routinely give justification for it under the Sharia as they understand it; the police lathi-charge blind demonstrators in Lahore and, in three other incidents, doctors and nurses too, to disperse them; paramedics and volunteers engaged in polio vaccination campaigns are being killed in different parts of the country by misguided zealots who are otherwise articulate enough to convince hundreds of families not to have their children vaccinated against polio.

Next, there is another category of irrational behaviour, noticeable not for violence but for total lack of reason by persons who are expected to be models of rational behaviour. Consider two such examples: one, lawyers boycott court proceedings and forcibly lock up the courts in some districts, on three different occasions, by way of protest against some episodes that had nothing to do with any action or lack of action by any of the courts, causing harm to the interests of none but their own clients; two, not long ago no less than three eminent scientists of the country thought it fit to endorse the claim of a self-styled auto-engineer that automobiles could be run on water. Some politicians and TV channels also jumped on what looked like a bandwagon running on water, before the excitement abated without the collapse of the oil market.

In this environment, a rational worldview cannot flourish. Even worse is the possibility that the erosion of the rational moorings of society could lead to the erosion of the moral values as well. Moral values are, after all, a rational construct and cannot survive in a climate of unreason. In fact, there is compelling evidence that the erosion of moral values is not merely a possibility, but already an ongoing process reflected in the collapsing moral order all around us. Consider a few examples: uncommonly perverse acts of sexual violence reported almost daily by the media; frequent cases of violent family disputes involving fratricidal, patricidal and even matricidal murders; resort to excessive brutality by the law-enforcement agencies, religious zealots and feudal masters of rural societies, apparently with a clear conscience.

These are some of the signs of an imminent collapse of the social order held together by a series of mutually supportive injustices sustained by tribal traditions, anti-people administration, and commonly held quasi-religious notions about women, the sectarian divide and inter-communal relations. How do we get out of this smouldering pit of socio-political volcano? There is a long list of things to do, but the foremost among them are two: one, reverse the insidious shift from the rational to the non-rational ways of looking at life and its challenges; two, initiate the long overdue (since the 16^th century) movement for a religious reformation. Fortunately for us, Allama Iqbal has laid down the philosophical foundations for both in his lectures The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.

In his fifth lecture (The Spirit of Muslim Culture), Iqbal makes this thought-provoking observation: “Man is governed by passion and instinct. Inductive reason, which alone makes man master of his environment, is an achievement; and when once born it must be reinforced by inhibiting the growth of other modes of knowledge.” Iqbal, thus, goes a step further. He is in favour of primacy of reason to the exclusion of ‘other modes of knowledge’. To achieve this goal, we need to begin from the beginning and introduce a curriculum for primary and secondary schools, designed to cultivate the habit of analytical, empirical and rational modes of thinking.

In his sixth lecture (The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam), Allama Iqbal offers an unequivocal and quintessential justification for reformation through ijtihad, which means “to exert with a view to form an independent judgment on a legal question”. This is what he says: “The claim of the present generation of Muslim liberals to interpret the foundational legal principles, in the light of their own experience and the altered conditions of modern life is, in my opinion, perfectly justified. The teaching of the Holy Quran that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems.” Reformation is, thus, not only permissible but also necessary.

These two quotes may come as a surprise to the conventional interpreters of Iqbal, mainly because there has never been a national discourse on the need and justification for any kind of reform or reconstruction of religious thought, although the ability of a human society to survive depends on its ability to reform and reconstruct, renew and reinvent. We seem to have chosen, instead, to be a living archaeological site where the curators are determined to preserve the past and prevent the future.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2016.

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