For Future

Watching everyday news about Pakistan, one can see a very gloomy image of the country. Pakistan is moving towards the direction which could lead it to Stone Age or medieval era. Evidently one can easily observe people's misconception of freedom and logic, their resentment towards counter arguments, their defiance to new ideas and their short sightedness. All this is a result of a false ideology prevailing in our society which was concocted by few opportunists, who love to exploit the gullible minds. As a result we are knee-deep in this problem. This difficulty spawns from one of our major institutions, which is education. Our education, doesn't have the problem of budget or the unavailability of schools as commonly believed, instead the problem persist in the very deep, which is curriculum of our schools. I remember reading about an Afghan king, the great mighty warrior who fought valiantly in the battles and scored himself, through his high determination a gargantuan treasure chest for his kingdom. Plus, I learned that he was a mighty warrior, who not only protected Muslims from outside threats but also conquered new lands for his people to live in, while his subjects including the ones subdued in the battle worshiped him as an idol for his display of honesty, truthfulness, and justice amongst all Muslims and non-Muslims alike. As a kid I wouldn't dare doubt the integrity of this story, as it was something that relates to my faith. As a result of this the first idea that got engraved on the walls of my sub conscience was that, we had a history of warriors who risked and dedicated their lives in fighting wars.

Moreover, we are told to never question history as it may somehow weaken our ideology of Pakistan and or Islam. My rebellious nature forced me to discover other side of the picture, to read the history from something other than our school text books, and oh boy was I in for a surprise, turns out the so called heroic king did not protected Muslims. Instead he straight up slaughtered hundreds and thousands of them just for a small piece of land. The only reason he left his land was to pillage unprotected villages and steal from Hindu temple, while facing little to none resistance on the way. This king never bothered to earn his treasure and livelihood through peaceful or legal means, this person never inspired art or inculcated civilized culture or even spirits of Islam into the minds of his subjects. Yet he is portrayed as a Muslim hero and conquer and a great leader of this region. 

Additionally, our education system has deliberately modified the history, which has greatly impacted our thinking. People of this region only admire the history that portrays them as savages and warriors, or in their words conquerors and champions. Plus they use it as a reference to glorify their lineage. The petty wars are so deeply entangled in our culture and history that our culture, something that has to add colors to our life, teach us poetry, philosophy and art, is replaced by war rituals. As a result of this people admire the history that only portrays them as warriors and fighter but not intellectuals. We have very little in our curriculum dedicated to the scientists, artists and philosophers. If we ever were to study Friedrich Nietzsche a genius of his time, he would be studied as a Godless idiot who got famous for blabbing about useless and unholy stuff.

Additionally, we have zero focus on philosophy in our education system, there is no concept of reason and logic in the text books, no instrument to develop logic and understanding, consequently, this has taken away the ability to comprehend any complex idea, and therefore for every logical question there is an "Expert" to resolve it for the common man. Moreover, this disabled mentality is the greatest cause for the rise in extremism and militancy in the country. People believe theology is wisdom that cannot be understood by their feeble minds and by attempting to understand it, they may land themselves in peril or end up making an unforgivable blunder. As a result they give the job of thinking to these experts, who very willingly use them to their advantage in any way they please. None of the common folks ever think that these so called experts could also make blunders like them. No! these experts are believed to have poses God like perfectness in their understanding of religion and are believed as true guide for their life, with our manipulated war history it becomes very easy to peruse the follower of most peaceful religion on earth, to kill and murder and innocent human being.

In a nut shell, the problem lies not in the religion or infrastructure or corruption or budget or people, instead it lies in the very core of our education system. As long as the core problem is not fixed there will always be an opportunist and there will always be a herd of gullible people following him. The policy makers of this country need to put their minds together and come up with another solution to the threat to the ideology of Pakistan, instead of depriving Pakistanis the lesson of wisdom and accurate history. Allowing people to think reason and see both side of the picture will be the only way to solve this dilemma.