Daily Times

The pithy axiom “Readers are leaders” was painted on the facade of my alma mater’s decrepit and a rather gloomy library in Karachi. Later, my alma mater in the US had a library–architecturally the most beautiful building on campus–, one which was specially designed to allow sunlight inside. It made you want to spend time there to read.

The state of leadership in both countries-political or technological-vindicates the ironic claim of my alma mater in my hometown.

At the time Quran was revealed, Meccans used to take great pride in poetry. It was based on the familiar binary of sex and violence (identified by Sigmund Freud as the two primary human drives). The ancient Arabian poetry has now been translated by western academics and is available on Amazon. It either celebrated tribal wars or narrated love stories.

Things have come full circle in Pakistan. We are also a poetry-loving and chanting nation, even though we are overtly religious and the Quran condemns poets and poetry.

“Only those who are lost in error follow the poets.” (Quran 26:24)

Allah SWT at the very outset commanded us to “Read” (Quran 96:1) through the Quran, which is God’s illibrium.

Very few in Mecca could read or write when Muhammad (PBUH) began preaching. To impart literacy, the captives of the first war of Badr (624 AD) were set free in exchange for each captive teaching ten people how to read and write.

It was knowledge that made the handful of nomad Arabs make astonishing enduring conquests of Roman and Persian lands, within a mere 12 years of Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) passing.

Those Muslims followed the dress code and rituals of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), but their religion was not limited to these two factors, unlike the Muslims of today.

Western nations lead the knowledge rankings, with East Asian nations and Israel tailing them. Pakistan is not even in the race.

Early Muslims were a knowledge-based economy; beginning with the era of the Caliph Umar bin Khattab (634-644 AD). Medina, the seat of the Muslim empire, was an unremarkable farming community and the Meccan immigrants were petty merchants. Neither had any true foundation of knowledge. However, the sagacity of Caliph Umar is astounding, if viewed in the context of the political economy, state and governance, and social justice. It arises out of his peerless understanding of religion.

Being the pillar of the Rashidun caliphate, Caliph Umar initially relied on Roman and Persian systems for administration, but then set up systems and institutions that are universally followed to date. He established a welfare state, which provided stipends for children and the poor, the old and the infirm, irrespective of religion. His other pioneering measures included establishing a police force, a state postal service and a pension system among many others. These practices led to economic prosperity in a just and equitable society.

The next stage for the Islamic empire was a technological triumph.

The legendary Abbasid caliph, Harun-ur-Rashid, established the Baytul Hikmah in Baghdad circa 800 AD. This centre of knowledge combined ancient Greek, Indian and Egyptian learning to establish a gateway to the new frontiers of knowledge. This institution employed not just Muslims, but also Jewish minds, to pursue knowledge and new learning. Algebra, chemistry, sophisticated medical knowledge, architecture and urban planning were invented by the Muslims in the next two centuries.

The fall of Baghdad in 1258 destroyed the knowledge base of the Islamic world. Although the 14th to 18th century’s contemporaneous Islamic empires of the Persians, the Turks and the Mughals were economically robust (and the Turks showed some scientific promise too), they were nowhere close to the erstwhile technological glory of Baghdad.

It has been a Eurocentric world since the 1800s, thanks to the industrial revolution of the 1760s, which was made possible by the birth of the Royal Society of London in 1660.

We now live in a world where scientific progress decides the pecking order of nations.

The Knowledge Index or KI is an economic indicator prepared by the World Bank to measure a country’s ability to generate, adopt and diffuse knowledge.

The KI has three key variables: education and human resources; the innovation system; and information and communication technology (ICT).

A state prospers with knowledge, in as much as it aligns the economy with its KI.

The World Bank coined the now-defunct Knowledge Economy Index (KEI). This gauged the country’s environment by factoring in the economic incentive and institutional regimes of the state.

In 2008’s KEI figures of the World Bank, Denmark scored the highest at 9.58. The top 35 slots were taken up by western nations, with Taiwan, Singapore, Israel, South Korea and Hong Kong joining them. The UAE topped the list of Muslim nations, scoring 6.66, and ranking 42.

Not surprisingly, when the World Bank discontinued the index after 2012, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF)’ created The Global Knowledge Index (GKI) as a replacement, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The UAE is serious about knowledge.

Pakistan’s score in 2008 was 2.26; ranking us 115th (out of 140 nations). This is the state of a nation that independently became a nuclear power and has supplied a vast number of doctors and engineers to the US, Europe and the Middle East.

These rankings are more than a decade old, but the world has not changed much in terms of knowledge-based economies. Western nations lead, with East Asian nations and Israel tailing them. Pakistan is not even in the race.

Knowledge is power, they say.

In Gilgit Baltistan in 2019, a school student had asked me how knowledge could empower anyone?

His line of thought had surprised me. Much like the rest of Pakistan, he understood power as military might, police action or perhaps the vulgar display of private wealth, i.e raw power.

Raw power is destructive, subversive and degenerative unless it is military might for deterrence and national security.

The power of knowledge lies in its resulting agency. Knowledge guides us in how to achieve our goals in the most efficient way.

We design procedures, methodologies and systems with knowledge. We then disseminate them across the nation. This makes us progressive and prosperous. This is how knowledge empowers.

Reading habits determine the level of knowledge of individuals, groups and societies. Book stores are rare in Pakistan, and what the average man or woman reads is either Islamic text or fiction. Pakistani Islamic literature is not intellectually engaging. It is marked by hyperbole.

In 2021, an unprecedented amount of knowledge is available through ubiquitous smartphones. Western newspapers, magazines and other publications are available for free or for minimal payment.

Reading a credible international newspaper is educational on many levels. First and foremost, it subliminally teaches the use of the crisp and concise expression instead of our long drawn style derived from poetry. It communicates the zeitgeist of the times, which clues a person to world happenings. It also provides food for thought. Finally, it inculcates a methodical and matter of fact approach to issues.

All of this is sorely lacking in our populace.

As of now, shocking cases of femicide are being witnessed in Pakistan. This creates a social media storm with angry rants and all possible suggestions as to what counts as just punitive action by the state. This is usually an individual’s appalling violent fantasy of justice. Probing deeper questions are neither raised nor addressed, which is why any resolution treats only symptoms and never heals the disease.

who sincerely seek knowledge and possess it, do not write social media rants. They engage in fruitful activism through the same platform of social media.

Readers are indeed leaders.

The writer is freelance columnist