Disease, pestilence, famine, natural
calamities, volcano eruptions and earthquakes are the natural phenomena since
the ascent of man on Earth. They were
augmented by wars, conquests, outsiders’ attacks and insiders’ battles for
power and hegemony on resources of land and wealth. Man could not and cannot escape the natural
calamities, except minimizing his losses by devising a scientific system of
advance information of such calamities.
But we could not find a way of escape from war, conquests, and weapons
of mass destruction. Philosophers, prophets, sages, and reformers have been
appearing at different time of history and civilization. We need not peep into the reformers’ working
of Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese and Indians in antiquities. We
have reliable data of our last two millenniums available for our study and
knowledge. What we find is a repetition of the same process described
above.
The more I ponder on the subject, the more
confused I am. One thing I see
clear. Here I take my person as specimen
for this study. Human society is basically
constituted on human being. And human
being is the embodiment of good and evil, right and wrong, white and
black. I find there are only two
distinctions in human being; man and
woman are born with only difference in their organ of male and female, a
natural design to perpetuate their species.
But they is no difference in their traits of character and
psychology. The most unique feature I
find in human being is his/her heart and mind in the confines of his/her body.
First we see around us our parents, brothers and sisters when we open our eyes
at birth; later we find our friends, relatives, our neighbors and countrymen. The only difference I find in all of us is in
the way we think and feel; each of us think and feel differently. Our actions and interactions, our behavior
and our treatment to each other are different with different person/s. It is this lump of brain in our skull and the
lump of heart in our chest that are the sources of all differences and all problems
of mankind. Of all the creatures in the
Universe only mankind has freedom of choice—a freedom to go right or
wrong. Let’s watch the two infants
sitting and playing with their toys; we will hardly find them playing
peacefully; one of the two will try to snatch the toy-property of the other.
The basic question now arises is: how to reform
our heart and mind in such a way that we can think and do for good of the
society we live in? No doubt, the great scientists and inventors like Thomas Edison,
Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Freud,
Picasso, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac
Newton, Sir Francis Bacon of the Christian world and Averroes (ibn Rush) Avicenna (Ali Ibn Sina), al-Farabi, al-Khwarzimi, Ibn al-Haytham and others from Muslim
world, each
contributed to the progress, development, comforts and benefits of humanity and
made us get rid of diseases and sufferings in our life. Their innovations and
inventions introduced the world with engineering and technologies of electrical
power, steam and nuclear energies, fossil fuels, railways, ships, airplanes;
telephones, printing press, radio, television, now with extension of digital and
information technologies. Inventions in medical sciences and technologies are
one of the most healing developments in man’s diseases and sufferings. Progress
in science and technologies are going on rising vertical and horizontal
directions with the passage of time. The world had not seen such inventions and
progress in two to three centuries before.
In spite of all
these progress in human society we could not get rid of the horrors of war,
famine, pestilence, hunger, genocide, and diseases. I have seen during my eighty seasons of life
world wars raising Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the ground, genocides of Khema
Ruse in Thailand, anti-semetic Holocaust in Germany, Tutsi-Hutu killings in
Rwanda, destructions of the Great Divide of India-Pakistan, and then
Pakistan-Bangladesh, wars in Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and ethnic cleansing in
Serbia-Herzegovina and now in Myanmar, Burma.
Our current century is not different from our past centuries in respect
of man to man and nation to nation interactions in hate, enmity, killings and
violations of human rights. How can we
reconcile the two conflicting sides of negative and positive traits of human life?
Even our
celebrated thinkers, philosophers, scientists, and inventors, as listed above,
were not immune of human weaknesses. Voltaire, one of the celebrated thinkers
of France in 18th century had a fight with an aristocrat. He was beaten by hired ruffians in front of
the aristocrat. When he asked his friends in police and court of justice, no
one was interested in helping him obtain justice. The aristocrat family of Rohans
was one of France’s most powerful families. They appealed to a minister for
protection, Voltaire was arrested and thrown into the Bastille jail; he was
released only on condition that he left the country. He was forced into exile
in England. Voltaire wrote during his confinement one of the most remarkable
books that became one of the leading sources of the French Revolution.
Voltaire’s
experience filled him with a seething hatred of the ruling regime, a hatred
that turned him into the most witty and venomous satirist in Europe. His criticism of religion and society
inspired reformers like Jean Jacques Rousseau; and it was Rousseau’s book, The
Social Contract (1762) that was mainly responsible for the French Revolution,
in which many members of the Rohan family lost their heads.[1] In recent
history, United States vengeance against Saddam Hussein Iraq, and again United
States attack of Afghanistan in retaliation of 9/11 are glaring examples of rulers’
and presidents’ dark side of character. Conflicts among rulers of Muslim world
against each other at one side and uprisings of Arab Spring against their
rulers on the other side are all the manifestations of evil side of human
character.
Mankind has been trying to subdue the evil
sides of their heart and mind from the very inception of human civilization. Doctrines
of magic, spirituality, medicine-man, soothsayers and religious elders have been
trying to intercede with their gods in primitive ages. Reformers, sages,
prophets, and philosophers have been trying since the dawn of civilization to find
all powerful and loving Gods to protect and solve man’s problems. We are struck
with awe when we read in the holy Bible: “Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness”(Gen.1:26)[2]; and we read in
the Qur’an: “We have indeed created man in the best of moulds” (95:4)[3] and later
declares “Then do We abase him (to be) lowest of the low” (95:5)
Mankind is
witness to have in their midst prophets, messengers, philosophers, sages, and
men of wisdom in order to invite man to worship God and to be good to their
neighbors, clans and tribe. Search for a superior Being to get help in time of
need is innate in human nature and it emerged with the emergence of human
civilization on the earth. The movements
of Renaissance, the age of Reform and Protestantism in Europe were basically
calls for reform in the Catholicism of Rome and Orthodoxy of Eastern churches.
They had little impacts on the belief style of Eastern religions like, Confucianism,
Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism and Islam. The concept of
‘Godlessness’ was practically a reaction movement against domination of
Catholic churches in post-Roman Empire. The one-half of the globe had little
disturbances and influences on their faith-traditions. There were no movements of
Reform and Renaissance in the Eastern half of the globe The social, religious,
political and cultural changes started to appear in the Eastern regions only
with the colonial domination of Western regions largely beyond 18th century.
The external history of religious traditions in Europe often
seems divorced from justification of faith in days of Renaissance. According this tradition, spiritual quest is
an interior journey; it is psychic rather than a political. It is preoccupied
with liturgy, doctrine, contemplative disciplines and an exploration of the
heart and mind, not with the clash of political events.
However spiritual their aspirations, religious people have
to seek God and His sacred in this world.
They often feel that they have a duty to bring their ideals to bear upon
society. Even if they lock themselves away, they are inescapably affected by
what goes on outside their monastery.
Wars, plagues, famines, economic recession and the internal politics of
their nation intrude upon their cloistered existence and qualify their
religious vision. Indeed, the tragedies
of history often goad people into the spiritual quest, in order to find some
ultimate meaning in what often seems to be a succession of random, arbitrary
and dispiriting incidents. There is a
symbiotic relationship between history and religion.
While Moses (pbuh) led Israelites protecting
them from oppression and persecutions of the Pharaohs of Egypt, the mission of
Jesus (pbuh) was as much a fight for the poor and persecuted mass of the Roman
Empire as the chief duty of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was to create a just
community in which all members, even the most weak and vulnerable, were treated
with equity and justice. We cannot separate God’s mission from man’s goal of
welfare state and society.
World has now
started to realize that no society can be congenial and peaceful without reform
in morality of man. And the only way is the way of God to achieve these ends.
ISRAR HASAN
15 JAN. 2015
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