Science and Enlightenment: East and West

My high regard for our national cricketing hero and philanthropist, Imran Khan declined a few notches when a friend forwarded me an article written by him (or in his name) called ‘Why the West craves Materialism and the East sticks to Religion’. This has apparently been circulating for a few months and is prominently posted on several Islamic websites. No wonder, since the essay is an unabashed (and ill informed) defense of religious orthodoxy with some awkward, and factually inaccurate, jabs at Science and Reason.

Mr. Khan, in addition to his iconic status as a cricketing legend has gained considerable respect and renown for his philanthropic work, primarily as the driving force behind the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital and Trust which has been doing great work for cancer patients for many years. His foray into politics has been less successful and, if this most recent piece is anything to go by, he is rapidly coming to an unsavory alliance with the most reactionary and anti-democratic forces in the country. On the surface, his essay is a description of his evolution from elite society playboy, raised in an upper middle class family, educated in a posh private school and then welcomed in the salons of England as an international cricketer and heart throb onward to sober politician, dedicated philanthropist and, it would seem, budding Maulana. Early on, he attacks Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection as ‘half baked’. This, 150 years after it was first published, and with all the scientific knowledge now at our disposal is like calling the theory of gravity half baked. I will not belabor this point since it was addressed in some detail in a rejoinder by Dawn columnist Irfan Husain in a piece entitled “Imran Khan vs Charles Darwin’.

Mr. Khan correctly points to the horrors of the Inquisition, supervised and approved by the Christian religious orthodoxy at the time, as having left a lasting impression on Western civilization and reinforced the notions of a secular society i.e. one where organized religious orthodoxy would not have a direct say in matters of state. His superficial analysis ends here though. He fails to mention (or does not know) that it was, in fact, the development of the scientific method (which he maligns repeatedly) which eventually broke the hold of the clergy on public life and allowed for the Renaissance, the Christian Reformation and the Enlightenment to lay the foundation of modern Western society as it exists today. It is also a little known fact that with the descent of Europe into the dark ages following the decline and fall of the Roman Empire around the 5th century CE, it was the still young and dynamic new religion from Arabia whose rulers actively encouraged their philosophers, intellectuals, scientists and physicians to collect all known knowledge around the world at the time in their libraries and places of learning, critique it, analyze it and develop new ideas. This was the time of leading lights of Islamic learning, men of towering intellects such as Ibn Seena, Al-Farabi, Al-Kindi and others. These were the people who kept the light of knowledge alive during Europe’s dark ages and allowed the beginning of the renaissance in the 13th century. This is all described in some detail in Dr. Pervaiz Hoodbhoy’s book ‘Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality’.

There are several arguments that follow in Mr. Khan’s essay that are even easier to dismiss. He talks about humans having to be ‘intellectually convinced’ of an argument instead of being ‘drilled’. In fact this argument flows logically when humans, in their typical fashion, hold themselves above and somehow, superior, to the natural world we live in instead of as part and parcel of it. Behavioral science, beginning with the experiments of Pavlov a hundred years ago, has proven that, in fact, behavior can be easily ‘drilled’ by sufficient repetition and motivation. Mr. Khan’s repeated invocations of supernatural interventions notwithstanding, his own evolution into what he describes as a ‘world class athlete’ would never have been possible if his entire effort revolved around praying to the Almighty to make him a better player. The application of scientific methods of training, nutrition, rehabilitation and conditioning played a substantial part in both his success as well as his career longevity, allowing him to play and succeed long after most of his contemporaries, who were not as dedicated as he, had faded into insignificance. Here too, he, of all people, should appreciate the role ‘drilling’ played in his success. It is now an elementary principle of sports science that repetition and practice, within physiological bounds, is the key to developing ‘muscle memory’, so crucial to peak performance at the highest level. In addition, his bashing of science seems a little churlish because without the technologies of electronics, television and the mass media, he would have remained just another obscure player playing a colonial sport that a large part of the world did not know or care about.

Does the East have a ‘superior family life’ as he asserts?

This dovetails nicely with the ranting of the extreme right wing Christian fanatics here in the US who are forever extolling the virtues of family and periodically being arrested for pornography, child abuse and homosexuality. Of course the family system in Europe, North America and all countries where there has been a large degree of industrialization has changed, in some cases to the detriment of children and single parents. However, does the ‘extended family’ of Pakistan and other developing countries, a result primarily of economic factors, not present its own problems and challenges? I am of course referring to comfortable middle class families and not to the unfortunate poor and destitute who are still, in the twenty first century, suffering under feudal and tribal family relations including honor killings, wife burnings and the like.

He poses two philosophical questions to science and finds it wanting. What is the purpose of existence and what happens after death? Science has never concerned itself with the first because as a collection of a body of evidence about the material world of nature, it does not concern itself with the metaphysical or supernatural. The first question has always been the purview of philosophy and has been answered many times by philosophers, both of a religious and non religious bent. The same applies to the second question. Of course science has answered what happens to us after death. Our physical shells rejoin the earth which gave birth to them. What happens to the ‘soul’, the ‘spirit’, ‘ruh’, ‘atmaan’ etc? Again, this is outside the purview of science but has been answered many times by others.

Mr. Khan finds the roots of all morality in religion ignoring (or oblivious) of the fact that morality predates religion and organized religion, especially as he is describing it, is a very recent phenomenon in history. Human kind’s presence on the planet dates back millions of years but only in the relatively very recent past have humans begun organizing their beliefs into formal religious rituals and practices. There are several sources to consult on this for the interested reader but a good start would be Mr. Ali Abbas Jalalpuri’s ‘Aam Fikri Mughltay’ (Common Intellectual Falsehoods) which devotes a whole chapter and parts of several others to just this theme.

Mr.Khan alludes to the lack of racial tension in Pakistan ignoring the mono-ethnic and mono-religious nature of the land and also conveniently ignoring the vicious persecution of religious minorities and those deemed infidels (Ahmadis, Shias etc). He acknowledges that Western countries provide more rights to their citizens, whatever their ethnicity, religion or beliefs but fails to connect it to the development of industry which leads to employment, education and all the associated social relations. There is nothing wrong with advocating justice and the rule of law, which are his party’s main platforms, but these abstract concepts are built on the foundation of economic relations i.e. the means that people utilize to secure food and shelter. It cannot be otherwise. Until Pakistan and other ‘developing’ countries break the strangle hold of the large land holders, develop indigenous industry to wean themselves off foreign ‘aid’ and then use that self reliance to develop a strong education system which will lead logically to stronger institutions like the judiciary, they cannot hope to uplift larger sections of their populations out of poverty and misery. We do not have to look far. Our neighbors to the East and Northeast, India and China have adopted differing approaches but are achieving similar results and stand poised on the threshold of joining the West and ultimately supplanting it as world powers. We can either choose to take a similar path or continue playing the role of agents in the pay of Western powers. One of the symptoms of a colonized, feudal mentality is hope in the ‘ultimate rescuer’, a messiah, a ‘strong leader’, a ‘Fuhrer’. History’s experiments with that approach have been a resounding failure and hundreds of millions have paid with their blood including our forefathers. Let us be those who learn from History rather than those condemned to repeat it.