This may be debatable, but old Greek literature tells us that there
lived, in the beautiful ancient city of Athens, a remarkable man named
Socrates. He had an academic as well as a political following in Athens
and he gathered, intrigued and touched many young minds during his
ethical inquiries. While the youth of Athens celebrated Socrates as
their great teacher, he considered himself a midwife, giving birth to
the souls of reason, and a gadfly, stinging the morally apathetic
civilians of Athens and waking them from their slumber.
If a leader had gathered people under the banner of justice (insaf)
in Socrates’ Athens, he would have asked those people what they meant by
justice. His ethical inquiries addressed the very basic issues of
society as well as the human nature. All he did was ask questions in a
discourse to help other people establish reasoned arguments for their
opinions. This method, that we now call the Socratic Method, helped the
youth of Athens understand how flawed their reasoning had been up till
then, and how the political elite was benefitting from the stunted
intellectual growth of the civilian population. So, Athens’ political
moto at the time of Socrates was “anything goes,” people put financial
gains over societal virtues and the individual morality had only to do
with worldly pleasures. Much to the displeasure of Athens’ social elite,
some young people were so motivated by Socrates’ discourses on justice,
courage, knowledge and wisdom that they pointed some dangerous fingers
at their fathers. Not long after that, Socrates was brought to trial on
the charges of corrupting the youth and leading them astray, and the
consequence of this for Socrates was death by hemlock.
Let’s now compare the ‘corrupted youth of Socrates’ to the youth of
today’s Pakistan. It may not be that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)
managed the largest young voters’ turnout in the 2013 elections, but
there is absolutely no doubt to the fact that a substantial majority of
the urban youth population sided with PTI. We cannot be completely sure
of how our rural youth voted but the more visible, urban youth has been
very active since their favourite cricketer joined the race for Prime
Minister-ship. Their obnoxious presence took social media by storm in
2013 and 2014, and corrupted social media for the rest of us, forever.
The youth that Socrates had corrupted decided to challenge the status
quo by writing books inquiring into the different forms of government,
the best possible society and the best way to live life. They became the
giants on the shoulders of which their descendants saw further and
further, and they became the light-bearers so their civilisation could
be delivered to the lights of enlightenment and science. The youth of
Pakistan on the other hand makes no inquiries whatsoever because it
already knows. They claim to know it all and they believe in
overthrowing governments forcefully. Socrates’ disciples went on to
establish the first universities in the world so education could reach
more people, and two thousand four hundred years later, our youth is
endorsing the corruption of education. The KPK government has banned
books, twisted the literature of the books for their Islamic agendas and
included biased historical narratives to pollute young minds but our
youth still stands with Mr Khan because he appeals to the irrational in
them.
On one particular subject, however, Mr Khan bears striking and
uncanny resemblance to most of the ancient Greek philosophers, and that
subject is ‘women.’ Just like ancient Greeks, Mr Khan too does not
believe that women deserve equal treatment. Beginning from the very
beginning, the Women’s Protection Bill of 2006 attempted to allow DNA
and forensic reports to be used as evidence for rape, something that
should sounds very reasonable to a rational being. This bill was
severely opposed by Mr Khan who claimed that if passed this bill would
bring “a made-in Washington Islamic system,” and later he said his
opposition was merely a reaction to the Musharraf-rule. Khan shook hands
with Musharraf on his preposterous referendum, his overthrowing of a
democratic government, his coming back to challenge a democratic
government but somehow, the protection of women did not seem like an
agenda to shake hands on. Moreover, after the recent Protection of Women
Against Violence Bill of 2015, Khan sided with those who called the
bill un-Islamic. So, to think that this Oxford graduate and his urban
followers would stand up for the right of women and their protection
against violence is apparently unwise.
The youth of Socrates drove the Western civilisation into the era of
public use of reason, a concept that the German philosopher Immanuel
Kant later dubbed ‘enlightenment.’ In order to reach enlightenment, a
little corruption of the youth is perhaps necessary. It is a concept
that Pakistan, even in the 21st century, is unacquainted with because
the fundamentalists never gave our society an option to endorse it and
the Mr Khans of our society helped them. Their modus operandi has been
simple; they keep our youth morally and intellectually sedated. And the
Muslim community stopped producing philosophers a very long time ago, so
don’t wait for a ‘gadfly’ or a ‘midwife.’
