Pakistan Wants to Be a Great Nation
By Dr Ghulam M Haniff
St. Cloud, Minnesota
Pakistan wants to be a great nation, prosperous and powerful, but it is going about accomplishing that goal in the wrong way. Military conquest no longer is the preferred solution to greatness, since weapons for war are widely available both in the open and underground markets. Building a modern civilization based on knowledge is the preferred solution and it is widely available to those nations who educate their people.
Britain demonstrated this trend after the voyages of Columbus, which began in 1492, and the United States followed suit with the infrastructure that was available and created by the United Kingdom.
In the contemporary world several countries have followed this framework but expenses are enormous. Since the fifties some nations have pursued this goal and are busily occupied at it at the present time. They are collectively known as BRIC or Brazil, Russia, India and China, and several smaller ones.
Contemporary China is built upon human knowledge which is applicable to all aspects of human endeavor, be it economic development, military power, social development or food production. In a few decades China will have the highest GDP and unconquerable armed forces. China has gone from a famine-stricken nation to a country with food surplus which are exported to all over the world.
Other members of BRIC are following the model established by China and that theory is lauded in the academic literature as well as in the field of economics. For building its developmental projects China has closely followed the scientific model, and that is by adhering to the empirical guidelines as established by scientific methodology.
The Chinese have introduced and linked science with economic activities and made economics into a scientific discipline. In fact they have linked science with all productive capabilities, perhaps even poetry.
At the moment they are out-producing goods and services at a higher level than most countries in the world. In many enterprises they have even out-produced the American productive capability. In a television show called “Cosmos: A Space Odyssey,” science scholar Neil DeGrasse Tyson declared that “the only true knowledge is science regardless of what people believe in.” China has seen it proper to take up his advice and produced a powerful productive structure in the shortest possible time.
If Pakistan wants to be powerful it has the option to adhere to the model depicted by Tyson in his Cosmos series. Tyson used the model to explain the intricacies of the universe and Pakistan can do the same to contribute to the growth of society. Unfortunately, science as a methodology is rarely used in that country and there are only a few people who can understand what the framework is all about. Blissfully, they do not know that the Qur'an exhorts the believers to understand the God’s creation and that includes the stars and the universe.
Of course, many people in Pakistan just parrot the Qur'an instead of showing any understanding of the text. There are many mullahs who have verbal memory of the prayers and important passages from the sacred text but have no idea of what is actually being said in the Book as far as the textual matter is concerned.
Without understanding the scientific method many in the public are against science as a methodology, and the framework is considered to be an anathema to the religion of Islam. Of course, most people in the country are not educated, or even literate, and hence they do not understand science and could not have discovered electricity as Michael Faraday did in 1792 even though he was a school dropout and at best a tinkerer. Science has yet to be become a part of the country’s culture even though people enjoy the fruits of science. Most people think that science is a Western idea even though Muslims took the concept and processes to Spain and expanded on it.
The European Renaissance was the fruition of science in the European hands of an idea brought to Europe by the Muslims. While Muslims wrote many books in Spain, most of them in Arabic, and later burned in the re-conquest period, only a few European authors wrote about the Muslims and considered science as a gift from the Muslims. In the Muslim countries science is seen as a European idea.
The generals in the army have repeatedly shown they do not understand the scientific model by losing every war they have fought. Every war against India was lost and a hundreds excuses were offered for losing those wars.
Therefore, it is high time for the country to find another avenue to accumulate power and become prosperous. Such a way has been shown by the Chinese and others of the BRIC collectivity, and there is no doubt that Pakistan should be able to follow their path.
Today, China is at the top in buying robotics, and data from 2013 trade statistics demonstrates it bought more robots than any other country with 36,560 scientific machines. Others in that league which rounds out the top five include Japan with 26,015; USA 23,679; South Korea 21,307; and Germany 18,297. China, Japan and South Korea are all Asian nations.
Pakistanis often complain that at the moment only the European nations are at upper rungs. However, statistics show more than half at the top are Asian nations. Anybody can be at the top provided they have the adequate knowledge. Two things about learning: everybody has to be educated as much as possible and the depth of knowledge has to be intense.
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