The Necessity of Teaching Science & Technology in our Madaris: Science & Sectarianism

 

In the name of Allah the most Beneficent and Merciful.

Science & Sectarianism

Sectarianism is a big issue in Pakistan, and I don’t want to go into its negative ramifications, we are all aware of it. I, along with few other people, started a yearlong software development course for ulema (graduates of our seminaries) in 2017. Details of this course are available at www.isdp.info  During these years I became acquainted with hundreds of ulema from all over Pakistan belonging to different sects and madaris (seminaries). The program requires a certain level of English and math. My initial presumption was that since these ulema deal with complex calculations involving laws of inheritance they will have the required math skills necessary for our program. But I was disappointed to find out that a good portion of them could not calculate the average of the two numbers.

Money, Consumerism and our Future

 This is a multipart presentation in which I discuss how money is created by banks, how consumerism creates false needs and how these two seemingly isolated aspects of capitalism merge to fool ordinary people to buy things that they don't need with money that they don't have.

Remaining parts of the presentation are as follows: 

Part2, Part3 Part4 Part5 Part6 Part7, Part8

Part9, Part10, Part11, Part12 Part13 Part14

Our Establishment, Karl Marx, and Winston Churchill

 

Every semester I give a presentation in my university titled “Materialism and our Education”. During the presentation I ask my students if they have heard of Karl Marx and almost always it is less than 5% who answer in affirmative, and out of those only one or two know about his ideas about private property and/or Das Kapital. When I ask them about Winston Churchill almost all of them know about him. At first, I was a bit confused about this bias but my confusion was eliminated when I read the English textbook for 12^th class. That book contains one full chapter on Winston Churchill, in

Capitalism, Environment and Sharia

 

In the name of Allah the most Beneficent and Merciful

Capitalism, Environment and Sharia

Our beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said

"If the Final Hour comes while you have a shoot of a plant in your hands and it is possible to plant it before the Hour comes, you should plant it." “The believer is not he who eats his fill while his neighbor is hungry.” “There is a reward for serving any living being.” “If a Muslim plants a tree or sows seeds, and then a bird, or a person or an animal eats from it, it is regarded as a charitable gift (sadaqah) for him.”

The above, and many more similar hadith, clearly require us to be guardians of nature, be conservators of resources, and strive towards sustainable living not just for us but for the entire earth.  Unfortunately, the world we are living in is going in the opposite direction. I won’t waste your time in detailing the environmental disasters that we are all witnessing on a daily basis but will go straight to the fundamental reason for it : Capitalism.

Time to Replace Materialism?

 All science and scientists works on models of understanding. These models of understanding change over time when new evidence comes about which contradicts the current model or the current model cannot fully accommodate the new knowledge. It does not matter how many or how powerful the followers of the previous model are.  For example for many centuries model of blood circulation proposed by Galen, a Greek physician was considered to be the truth. “According to the Galenic system, Blood flows through invisible pores from right side into the left side of the heart. Such an authority was Galen that the practice of medicine was built around his defective understanding of physiology for the next 1500 years. Galen's findings were first challenged in the 1200s by an Arab physician, Ibn-al-Nafiz, who insisted there were no

Covid-19 an Opportunity for Pakistan

 

You might think that I am some sort of sick capitalist who is looking for opportunity in a pandemic, trust me I am not. If fact I am not a fan of capitalism either. So spare five minutes to go through what I have to say. We in Pakistan are at a unique sweet spot regarding industrialization. Fortunately we have not industrialized and automated to the scale and level as in the western world and that provides us an opportunity not available to the western world. Let me give you a few examples to illustrate my point.

The real reason for American police brutality that no one wants to talk about.

By now you must have seen the picture of George Floyd being choked to death by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin. But I am sure that you have not seen these other four pictures.

In case you are wondering, these are Israeli beasts ( soldiers ) sitting on top of Palestinians. Especially take a closer look at the upper right picture. You can guess that the boy pinned down is just a kid. These Israeli beasts are

Coronavirus is a sheep dog

“Markets to open five days a week from sehri  till 5pm” was the news regarding relaxation in COVID-19 related lock-down in Pakistan. In a very ironic way this virus is acting as a sheep dog and compelling people to

Post Coronavirus world

Whether it came from a bat or a snake or CIA I don't know. For me the important thing is what will happen when it subsides, ie what global changes will take place. Different powerful individuals and groups will forward

Coronavirus and Capitalism

According to CNN Chinese government is afraid that the money supply is also contaminated so they have started a process of deep cleaning and destroying potentially infected cash. (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/17/asia/china-is-disinfecting-cash-coronavirus-intl-hnk-scli/index.html ). This is a good example of “never let a good crises go to waste” strategy of the global capitalists. The whole world is afraid of coronavirus at the moment. Everyone is scared to touch anything which can transmit the virus, so it is a good time to tell the public that we should get rid of the paper currency and only use digital money. This will allow them more control over the lives of ordinary people. I have explained in my previous presentation (http://nadeemchaudhry.blogspot.com/2016/10/money-consumerism-and-our-future.html ) how paper money has allowed the global capitalists to enslave ordinary people. The move towards digital money will allow them complete control.

Madrisa vs University

Abubaker why didn't you point out that I was making a mistake? I asked the best programmer of my class. He raised his head, looked at me, gave me a faint smile but didn't answer. At that point I realized that it was out of respect for "ustad ji" that he

مادیت اور ھمارا نظام تعلیم

This is a multi-part presentation dealing with the issue of how current education, especially our higher education system, is promoting a materialistic world view and what should we do about it. The slides are in English but the narration is in Urdu. Here is first part

This is part-2

Here is the last part

Why and how should we confront capitalism? (1/2)

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer with more than 4,300 stores in the United States and over 8,000 worldwide, with global sales topping $400 billion in 2009. Walton family owns Wal-Mart, and they own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans. Many research studies have thoroughly documented the negative impacts of  Wal-Mart  on local economies. These studies have shown that in cities and towns where Wal-Mart opened its stores the local stores went out of business and unemployment rose.  After a single Wal-Mart opened in Chicago in September 2006, 82 of the 306 small  businesses in the surrounding neighborhood had gone out of business by March  2008. The common customer thinks that he/she is getting a better price but that is not necessarily true and definitely not in the long run. Why, you would ask.

Hajj-e-Akbar and Deen-e-Capitalism

I am not a mufti or a financial expert. I am an ordinary Muslim who is deeply concerned about the combined ideological onslaught of secularism and capitalism on Muslim societies. We are passing through 9^th ZilHajj (Arafat Day), but I may be excused for saying that Hajj nowadays has become a sequence of rituals in which you are taken around in packaged tours by commercial companies. Much like if you buy a package from some vacation tour company with all the comforts of life. The spirit is mostly gone. Hajj means effort, please look at the pictures of Arafat below and tell me where the effort is? Does it convey any idea that on the Day of Judgment this place will be the place where all of us will be collected and it will be intense hot on that day ( no Pepsi) ? 

 No wonder that three million Muslims, who are expected to perform Hajj this year, will have almost no effect on their countries of origin when they return back. Look at the picture below and honestly tell your heart which looks more impressive the

Secularism, Capitalism and our Education System

A few weeks ago two of our students stole a multimedia projector. They were eventually caught and punished. Referring to that incident, the Director of our campus, Dr. M. A. Bodla said, “what are we teaching?” Following article is my response to his question.

Ukraine: Next Jihad in making and why should Pakistan care?

The results of the Crimean referendum planned for March 16^th by Putin & Co is a foregone conclusion. It will be decided that Crimea wants to join Russia and Russia will accept Crimea with open arms. What happens after that should be of great interest to us because it will most likely involve some of us. Why I say that?

Merging of Islamic and Pakistan Studies in Institutions of Higher Learning in Pakistan

A move is afoot in all institutes of higher learning to merge Islamic and Pakistan Studies into one course. Currently these two are being taught as two separate courses each being a 3 credit hour course. In the merged scenario there will be one 3 credit hour course. There are several reasons given for this move, I will present some of those reasons that I came across during my discussions with faculty members from different institutes of higher learning. But before I do that I would like to present a possible background/explanation that I think is the driving factor behind this move.

Freedom of ownership: the freedom to oppress, persecute and enslave

We are living in the era of industrial feudalism. Large capitalist corporations own and control almost everything on which the society depends. Building blocks of economy like oil, gas, electricity, sources of industrial raw materials and metal ores as well as human intellect are privately owned by large capitalist corporations.

What good can we expect when such basic things are monopolized in a few hands? This freedom of the capitalist to own whatever suits his profiteering transforms bulk of the society into a peasant worker class.

Islam does not allow this freedom to enslave the whole society. The Messenger of Allah (S.A.W) provided comprehensive guidance about who can own what. Sharia rules of ownership protected Islamic society against feudalism for more than ten centuries, until European powers colonized and enslaved Muslim ummah into the clutches of both agrarian and industrial feudalism.

Democracy & Capitalism : A deadly combination

democracyP1 from Nadeem Chaudhry on Vimeo.
This is still work in progress and as such the last couple of minutes needs modifications. I will do that soon. The partial transcript is available below:

Cloud Computing, baby milk & Nixon Shock

Trust me they are related! 
At the end of FIT-2012 (http://www.fit.edu.pk/)  there was a panel discussion in which cloud computing was presented as an excellent option for Pakistan to leap frog the problem of setting up expensive power consuming data centers. The fact that we have load shedding problem in Pakistan was presented as a very important motivating factor for move towards adoption of cloud computing. I have two objections to this solution in the current scenario which I present with historical background. 
http://www.babymilkaction.org/pdfs/babykiller.pdf tells how baby milk manufactures dressed their sales girls as nurses who persuaded unsuspecting mothers to abandon mother’s milk in favor of powder milk. Among the reasons given was the inadequate amount of milk that mothers were able to produce. Except for a very small percentage ( in single digit ) majority of mothers are fully capable of producing adequate milk for their babies. But once a baby is hooked up to something other than mother’s milk it is almost impossible to get back to mother’s milk for both the baby and the mother. This means that a single pack of free sample powder milk that the company provided made sure that they have a totally dependent customer for at least one year. Similarly if we get “hooked” on free or very cheap “cloud” now because we cannot produce enough electricity we can rest assure that we will pay a very heavy price in the long run. I am sorry but if any one doubts that then he/she does not understand capitalism. 
“In 1944, the Bretton Woods system fixed exchange rates based on the U.S. dollar, which was redeemable for gold by the U.S. government at the price of $35 per ounce. In other words, the U.S. dollar was based on the gold standard. But on August 15, 1971, Nixon issued Executive Order 11615, and unilaterally "closed the gold window", ending convertibility between U.S. dollars and gold.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock This basically meant that the US government told other countries that it is no longer going to give them the gold which legally belonged to them. US being US did what it wanted and got away with it. If we put all of our data ( grades of our students, medical history of our families etc ) in US hands and expect not be exploited at some later point in time than we are fools who do not learn from history. 
I would suggest : 
The problem of load shedding should be fixed instead of making it as a basis of another much bigger problem. 
We partner with friendly/trust worth countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Iran, Egypt etc and build our “cloud” by sharing/replicating resources. This will also solve the problem of under-utilization of resources when it is night in Pakistan. 
I am afraid that if we don't take practical steps to build our own cloud than in less than five years time almost all of data will be in US hands. Keep in mind what India does to the flow of our rivers and than imagine what US will do when all of our data ( CT scans, doctor's prescriptions, student grades etc ) will be in US control. At that point our doctor's won't be able to operate because the data needed to operate will be in US. Our universities won't be able to issue transcripts because student grades will be in US.

I hope people are not offended by what I have written. 

Thanks & AH