Thread by @RezaAli1980

So PM Imran Khan has once again resurrected talks about abolishing the British system and resurrecting Iqbaliaat as the lightening rod of philosophical and religious teaching across schools in Pakistan. This takes me back to 1994. THREAD:

In that year IK visited his and (my) alma mater Aitchison College, where he addressed all the students of the college. We are obviously starry eyed to see the most iconic Pakistani ever and couldn’t wait for his speech.

IK was surprisingly sarcastic and visceral about Aitchison College and the fact that the school produced “brown sahibs” I.e students shackled in mental servitude to British mannerisms, speech and traditions.

He exhorted that we should shun Charles Dickens and read Iqbal and regaled, the first of many spiels, the lost glory of Islam which was snatched away by the British.

He also commented that we should wear Shalwar Kamiz as our uniform and showed disdain towards pants and trousers as trademarks of British slavery.

As 14-15 year old adolescents who didn’t know better, we felt angry and ashamed at the dressing down keyed out but didn’t find it revolutionary as our entire curriculum was based on glorifying Muslim conquerors and Iqbal’s poetry exhorting them to capture past glory.

Aitchison was elitist as hell, but it sure as hell didnt produce many brown sahibs because of the relatively wider socio economic backgrounds of the students and plus acting posh could get you beaten up!

Looking at that incident in isolation, it would have been uncharitable to judge Imran Khan on that outburst. The process of growing up is being inspired by views with almost a messianic zeal but then re-examining then as you grow older and finding nuance.

Yet, it is 2019 and PM IK is still obsessed with the evil British system and spearheading Iqbaliaat in curriculums across Pakistan. The question is why one, and not so many others?

Minute sample size, but I’ve been teaching Jurisprudence and Legal Theory to undergrads for years. Philosophy is a subject our students generally sneer and initially find no intrinsic value in. But at the end of the course their new found ability to critique is like a superpower.

So you can learn about Thomas Aquinas, Marx, Feminism, H.L.A Hart without according infallibility to each theory. You can critique them, for that is the point of philosophy. And students do, with great eloquence and understanding.

By all means introduce Iqbal and his philosophy (it’s already a core part of our syllabus), but will the new curriculum allow critiques of Iqbal? Will they also examine why his philosophy has been piggybacked by the TLP and Khadim Hussain Rizvi?

Conversely, will other aspects of Iqbal’s poetry such as the love for the Ahl-Bait and Hussain’s sacrifice at Karbala be also magnified? A topic that is sidestepped or given perfunctory lip service by most curriculums in Pakistan because it’s controversial.

After all one of the iconic couplets of Iqbal is this inconic verse;
ISLAM KAY DAMAN MEIN AUR ISS KAY SIWA KIA HAY
IK ZARB E YADULLAHI IK SAJDA E SHABBIRI"

Too much of IK’s ideologies are propped up by an attack on other viewpoints and in simple binaries. You can have two viewpoints existing side by side and appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of both.

And it’s our children here that we have to worry about. Too much of the O, A level system, despite its claims of critical thinking, does anything but that. You figure out the pattern of the paper, write passably good English and analyse the bare minimum and you can get an A.

The joy of learning is getting multiple views on a subject and figuring out what appeals to you. Teach Iqbal, but don’t lionise him. Ultimately Aristotle said it best that “The unexamined life is not worth loving.”

Introduce science, philosophy, religion, do it through podcasts, talks, every goddamn thing exists on the internet. Build up a curriculum that incorporates all this, not just one ideology. This is when you well produce relatively better equipped thinkers.

Apologies for the long thread. But this disjointed jumble of thoughts needed to be expressed.