Let me confess right at the outset of this article that I am a huge Malala fan. For me, personally, she (not Imran Khan) is the harbinger of a new Pakistan. This is because she has had the courage to not only question and challenge those who were driving us back into the dark ages and continuing customs that are responsible for our backwardness, but she also has the courage to campaign against them in a meaningful and tangible way.
When people ask on social media what she has done to deserve this award, I can only respond that she is, today, the leading campaigner for universal and free education for the children of the world. She has inspired millions of people with the courage and eloquence to think very seriously about what is established as a fundamental human right but remains conspicuous by its absence for a vast majority of the people of the world.
For me, all those theories that accuse her of being an agent or an actress are not even worthy of refutation because they are ridiculous in the extreme. Similarly, I summarily dismiss any criticism of Malala’s own struggle on account of criticism of the Nobel Peace Prize as a tool of Cold War politics. Such criticisms of the latter only have a tenuous bearing, at best, on the former. However, perhaps the question that requires greater attention is why there is so much hate for her in her own country, to which she cannot return for security reasons, whereas in the rest of the world there is only love?
I think the answer to this riddle can be found in the fact that Muslim civilisation as a whole has long decided never to honour anyone who may be connected to secularism or even to rational scientific thought. Since the time of al Ghazali, when philosophers inspired by the Greeks such as al Kindi, al Farabi, Ibne Sina and later Ibne Rushd were considered heretics and accused of taking people further away from religion, Muslim civilisation as a whole has turned inwards, parochial and xenophobic. It is no accident therefore that these great Muslim philosophers, responsible for the Renaissance in Europe, considered the very founders of European secular thought, are utterly unknown in our own civilisation. The title of Sheikh-ul-Islam does not go to them but rather to conservative theologians who were far from advancing such knowledge and played a leading role in ensuring its destruction in their own societies.
Similarly, some of the greatest Pakistanis are honoured in countries other than Pakistan. Take, for instance, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. On my tours to India as part of the Laal band, I discovered to my utter shock how he is revered in the length and breadth of that country even by people who cannot read the Urdu script. And, in our own country, he spent his entire life either in prison, exile, in the death cell or struggling to get his poetry published and heard. In fact, Faiz is just one archetype of the fate of nearly every single progressive that one can think of in our history. The fate of Ahmed Faraz, Sibte Hassan, Habib Jalib and Sajjad Zaheer to name a few is no different (but sometimes significantly worse). Or take one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, Dr Abdus Salam, who won the Nobel Physics Prize but was never given the honour he deserved on account of his religious beliefs. Celebrated all over the world and virtually unknown to the common people of Pakistan.
In the humanities, natural and social sciences, take people like Eqbal Ahmed, Hamza Alvi, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Asma Jehangir, Aitzaz Ahsan and so many others who are repeatedly honoured all over the world but are either totally ignored or brought on the media only to be abused by reactionaries of the likes of Ansar Abbasi and Orya Maqbool Jan. Or take Mukhataran Mai, loved for her courage all over the world but accused by the very president of this country of having orchestrated her own rape in order to get a visa and more money.
If ever one could identify the cause behind the decline of Muslim civilisation, it would be the utter inability of the people to differentiate heroes from third-rate reactionaries. The very people we denounced as traitors, agents, actors and so on, the very people we prefer to surround with the conspiracy of silence or a conspiracy theory built on lies, the very people for whom we reserve the choicest abuse are, in fact, the true representatives of a new Pakistan.
We do not wish to move towards a secular, modern, scientific and rational society. We want to remain in the framework of taqlid (imitation). And taqlid in the context of an advancing world history can only inexorably lead to the absurdity and barbarity of the Taliban. And that is exactly why I feel compelled to write this article in support of Malala Yousafzai and all the others who have attempted to break this mould of taqlid and brave a new world of tanqid (critical self-reflection) and tehqiq (research).
The writer is an assistant professor of Political Science at LUMS, spokesperson for Laal (the band), and general secretary of the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party (CMKP)