Brilliant Pakistanis and the Sad State of Pakistan

By Mahjabeen Islam-Husain

As a Pakistani-American, I exult in the triumphs and grieve over the problems of both of my homelands on two continents. Lately I’ve spent a great deal of time pondering the sharp contradiction between Pakistanis and what has become of our country.

There has never been a dearth of talent in our citizenry. There is no arena of life in which Pakistanis have not scored highly. We boast a Nobel Laureate in physics as well as the great visionary and poet Allama Iqbal, whose equal is hard to find in English literature and philosophy.

We have excellent physicians, who have returned to the land of their birth after the best of training in England and North America. They have been able to pull up the standard of medical practice in Pakistan almost exponentially. Many of them tolerate the rigors of living in Pakistan for the noble purpose of serving the nation or shielding their children from the amorality of life in the West.

Pakistani engineers were able to build one of the largest earth-built dams in the world, at Tarbela. Many a mosque and various skyscrapers attest to the skill of our architects. The originality of our artists and designers is colorfully depicted in Pakistan’s well-developed textile industry. Our artisans weave a carpet of perfection, and sculpt both contemporary and deeply traditional jewelry.

Our valiant soldiers have kept rude insurgents out effectively. And then there is the father of the nation, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who made the almost antithetical words “principled” and “politician” a reality.

And if that were not enough, Pakistanis were able to successfully test a nuclear device and various missiles with nuclear warheads. It is certainly an achievement for a nation with only a fraction of the wealth of other Third World countries.

As individuals we are a joy, but as a collective whole our failure is ignominious. And there is the contradiction.

We are, as a general rule, a believing people, and Islam has entered our psyche and culture fairly deeply. From a religion which places high importance on honesty and integrity comes a nation where the lack of collective integrity is appalling. The economy and the financial stresses of living with high unemployment notwithstanding, Pakistan is a nation into whose fabric is now woven the art of bribery.

An illegal gratuity is offered and accepted and nary an eye blinks. Many a taxpayer would prefer to wine and dine the tax man than pay the requisite due. It is certainly cheaper in this life….

We have forgotten the sacrifice of life and property in the creation of Pakistan.

Our educational system is an inverted pyramid. Instead of creating a wide base of primary and then secondary education, with the most gifted moving on to attain bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees, the few who are literate in Pakistan have at least a B.A. or B.S. The crime rate in Karachi has risen dramatically and you may well have your home burglarized or your life turned around, in fluent English.

And then of course there are the perils of power, which corrupts absolutely and almost instantaneously. Success transforms those who conduct understated and humble campaigns for elective office within a very short while into insatiable money-hungry monsters, stopping at nothing to hold on to power.

The memory of Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan is too remote to worry them. Instead of using governmental power for the good of the people, in Pakistan power is used as a short cut to that $15 million diamond necklace, a 10 percent commission on contracts, limousines and that Rolex from Tiffany’s.

Even more tragically, this abuse of power is not by the nouveaux riches but by the “generationally” wealthy.

I come across various explanations for the contradiction between the individual and the collective Pakistani: that we are at the mercy of our government, or of other states, or that it is because we are a Third World nation. Most folk are plain stumped.

“Flexible” Integrity

My theory is that we are a self-serving people with “flexible” integrity. We have forgotten the sacrifice of life and property in the creation of Pakistan. We do not think of ourselves as a nation, our patriotism begins and ends with the notes of our nationalistic songs. In every situation we put our personal gain ahead of all else—above and beyond God, principles and pride. The net result is the major mess that Pakistan is today.

Islam so beautifully designates the family unit as the building block of society. If Islamic principles are followed, especially the fact that dishonesty is classified as a “major” sin and in most societies is considered, or should be, the fountainhead of all evil, most of Pakistan’s problems can at least be managed.

It is ironic that Pakistan is the only nation on earth that was created in the name of Islam, and yet its people have drifted away from its most basic tenet. The semi-automatic movements of prayer, the ritual of fasting, the attempt to lead a pious life are so meaningless in the face of the abuse of integrity.

How I wish that more soapbox ruminations like mine would cleanse Pakistan and, with our brilliant minds, we could help make it the most progressive nation on earth.

But I recognize that this is no simple problem. After much thought, however, I have reached what might be the beginning of the solution.

Pakistanis in North America and Britain generally lead productive lives and, even in the relatively short time we have been there, have managed to contribute positively to the societies and economies of the U.S., UK and Canada. We do not have too much trouble following the laws of the land in any of our second homelands.

Muslims in Britain have been successful in having a Pakistani elected to Parliament. Muslims in Canada are organizing at the national level also. And in the United States there is a great push by all Islamic organizations to coordinate their efforts so that Muslims may vote as a bloc, where this is warranted, in the year 2000 elections.

Pakistanis can (and to a great extent already do) spearhead these efforts to make a positive contribution, through our presence, to political morality in the U.S. We must make our family-values-based contributions at all levels, from city/county politics right up to the congressional and presidential levels. In so doing we shall then be able to influence the aspects of American polity that concern us. A fairness in foreign policy and foreign aid, implementation of human rights—basically every avenue of life.

It is vital that we make a concerted effort toward this goal, for a great deal rests on its achievement—the security of our children’s children here as well as the progress of our original motherland.

With the personal and political strength that hands-on participation in the American political system would afford us, we would be better able to export the mechanism of democratic representation to Pakistan, for then we would know its workings at all levels.

As yet, expatriate Pakistanis are disunited in their vision of the future, prone to in-fighting, recriminations and the breakup of our organizations. Now it’s like the weak (over here) helping the lame (over there). In my opinion, the weak need a dose of political vitality to provide the lame with prescriptions for effective methods to deal with the maladies that plague present-day Pakistan.

Dr. Mahjabeen Islam-Husain is a Sunni Muslim Pakistan-born family practice physician living in the Midwest. She and her husband, a Shi’i Muslim who also is a physician, have three daughters, and both are active in their local Islamic communities and in national Muslim-American affairs. She may be reached via e-mail at tennisjunkie@pol.net