Einstein would have benefited immensely from Pakistan if he were alive today. The time travel conundrum that consumed most of his scientific travails would have neatly unravelled itself to him. The constant grappling with complex math and speed of light modelling would have been rendered moot because, had he been alive today, he would have realised that you do not need to travel the speed of light to warp in time, you simply need a PIA flight to Pakistan. Needless to mention that this time travel would be backwards. But all satire aside, given the recent string of sordid episodes that have once again pushed Pakistan into international ignominy, would it be too outlandish to assert that we have a society with an arrested history? If viewed in context, we are confronted with a vision of life that is frozen in a pre-scientific window. While the rest of the world is making inroads into cosmological and quantum realities, we are still actively engaged in pre-historic debates and 7th century disputes that the rest of human civilisation has left far behind. History tells us that the West has had its ample share of savagery, as the Spanish Inquisition and Salem Witch trials would testify; however, it was precisely this diabolical character of the Vatican, which set the stage for European enlightenment. The problem with Islam is that, historically, there has never been a central authority like the Vatican that could be confronted or tamed in the face of religious lunacy of the kind manifested in Pakistan today. This has allowed almost anyone with a big beard and a cult following to proclaim divine warrants for promiscuously issuing death verdicts against people whose only crime was freethinking. This also explains why Islam did not go through a similar reformation as its sister monotheistic faiths, as there was never any distinct body of beliefs and values that Muslims could identify with, let alone challenge. Pakistan is unfortunately an extreme incarnation of this phenomenon. The central theme behind Pakistan’s creation was purportedly Islam, consequently reducing its ideological bearings to the fringes with no anchor point in the centre. The absence of a distinct ideological centre and a coherent system of values and principles almost invariably breeds a crisis of identity, the sort that exists in our society today. Notice that this phenomenon is antithetical to what we see in the developed world. Let us take the US as an example, where American principles and ideals are ceaselessly re-iterated everywhere, so that the American citizens remain cognizant of who they are and what they stand for (at least in theory). American ethos and principles were conceived by the most forward looking and progressive people of their time and their principles have remained uncontaminated by religious associations and ethnic/racial connections to this day. Indeed, it is these very ideals that have come to define American identity. Even India, with its fantastically eclectic demographic realities, is another example, which has, through nationalism, with all its concomitant bearings, coupled with its indigenous values and culture, managed to establish a unique identity for its citizens. Compare this to Pakistan where there are no core principles that define us and no cultural clarity that identifies us. The only apparent unifying agency in this inchoate mix of identities is religion, but we all know that far from being cohesive, it has actually been the single most divisive element in the country’s history. The issue with drawing one’s identity and morality solely from religion is that religions are subjective and can be interpreted in several ways, which is why religion is best served as long it occupies one’s personal realm. This, unfortunately, has not been the case in Pakistan, where the convictions of a few and the ignorance of many has muddled our worldview to a very disturbing extent. Perhaps this is why our sense of identity and morality is obscure at best. This has culminated in the following: 1) a perennial struggle to establish an identity by perpetually framing ourselves against a perceived enemy (imagined or exaggerated); 2) complete moral bankruptcy and nihilism; 3) a ubiquitous and all-prevailing sense of paranoia and a general discontent with the world; 4) a facile, and at times pernicious view of this life as an unnecessary and inconvenient encumbrance in the way of eternal ‘real’ life; 5) mass psychosis brought on by a pathological obsession with a mythical ‘glorious’ past and nursing apocalyptic ambitions for an imagined future; 6) intellectual paralysis and an unwavering commitment to resisting change/reform; 7) promoting a culture of death by exalting martyrdom as a desirable goal in this life — a peculiar case of solipsism that puts us at the centre of a scheming world that actively seeks to destroy us, and 8) a refusal to view the world with the aid of facts and a disinclination towards free-thinking and introspection. As a society, assailed by the ravages of sinister cultism and dogmatism for decades, we find ourselves today at the mercy of vague interpretations of religious texts that can easily be distorted to advance the vile agendas of those who profit from obscuring the truth. This probably explains how a good number of people, not necessarily illiterate, could beatify Salmaan Taseer’s murderer or sociopaths of his kind. Clearly, such people are advertising themselves beyond reason and have completely absented themselves from rational discourse. It is exactly this mentality that is a curtain raiser to the sort of nihilistic worldview that has engulfed our imagination. However, the younger generations in Pakistan are in fact gradually turning more moderate, especially now with the growing tide of globalisation that is fast reaching out to all corners of the world, and so we can hopefully expect the problem of religious fanaticism to taper off eventually — if not completely die out. But the problem is that, given our fantastically precarious geo-political reality, we simply do not have time on our side. So the only practical way to stem our extended death march is for moderates to make themselves heard by a concerted effort of organised media campaigns, textbook revisions and an unequivocal recognition of the malaise that has undone us all these years. The writer is a Solution Design/Development Consultant currently based in New York. He can be reached at tahanajeeb@hotmail.com