And here is a poignant illustration of the reverence for nature expressed by the beduin of the North Arabian desert, who profess Islam, which is strikingly reminiscent of that of the American Indian.

Every evening the Ruala tribe occupied new pastures—such as they were—farther north. The drought and famine they suffered in each of these camps was terrible. In the chieftain’s household, the black slave, Mnahi, was in charge of rationing the water supply which was precious little.

As with the water, ## so with the milk of the camels which on good pasture used to give between four and five quarts of milk a day now gave less than one. The herds of camels were a sorry sight, emaciated and covered with dust.

I was talking with the tribesmen about certain grazing lands north-east of us when my men, Faris, who had overheard our conversation, said to me, “Let us go and explore this territory forbidden to us by hostile tribes so that we may reassure our people and give them hope….”

24 This exploration which we then made—Faris, I and two slaves—had consequences we did not then anticipate. The scenery changed almost immediately after we had passed into this enemy territory. White clouds sailed in the blue sky—a long-missed and promising sight for it was the first sign of rain we had seen for many months. Herbage was visibly thriving here, thicker, taller and there were flowers. The farther we advanced into the North and the uplands, the richer became the vegetation and many wild fowl and also some gazelles started up at our approach. We stepped into a green sea of waving grass and flowers. The tall green blades of delicate grass swept about our long robes and cloaks.

Above us, a lark soared rapturously over a flowery hillside while at our feet the crickets chirped. In silent gratitude we stood knee-deep in this paradise. Faris walked away, slipping his woollen robe from his shoulders.

Then he stopped and contemplated this awe-inspiring steppe, the meadows over which brooded the peace of Arabia. His gaze swept this abundance—the promised land which in his imagination he saw peopled by his tribe and their herds of camels. And then his head drooped. How can I express what passed through my mind as I looked upon the bowed figure amidst this verdure.

“Let Ismail live after thee!” he cried involuntarily. Faris was grieving for his people and the awful tragedy of the dying grasslands and the parched plains where his famished tribe was wandering.

A slight shudder ran through his body; he dropped to his knees, buried his face into the sweet smelling grass and stroked caressingly the beloved earth. “Ya-ummi!—My mother!” he cried out. This wilderness was his mother and she was beautiful, most dear, for he had never known others.

Before we started homeward, Faris tore up bunches of grass 26 by the roots. Each one of us had to take back an armful of it to testify to the fertility of the land we had explored. When we reached camp, we found hundreds of men seated cross-legged before the chieftain’s tent—wild, dark, hungry-looking men with their long black plaits of hair showing beneath their headcloths. We spread out before them our silent witnesses—the bunches of grass, herbage and flowers which were no less precious for being withered. All night long people came even from the most distant camping places to see and touch them. They reverently fingered the long grasses with exclamations of joy and praise to God. Now and then one of them would hand a blade of grass to his neighbour who would then lift it to his lips with a murmur of “Ta-hayat! O life!”

Faris said: “Here are the proofs of rich life. Tell my tribesmen that we shall go on!”

And from the opposite end of the cultural scale, the great saint and Turkish religious leader, Badee-uz-Zaman Said Nursi (1873-1960), who endured years of imprisonment and exile for his resistance to the Westernization imposed on his country by Ataturk, writes in his autobiographical papers:

Now I will tell you about an old memory and an unrecorded private part of my defence at the Eskisehir trial (1935). There I was asked: “What do you think of the Kemalist Republic?” My reply was: “Just before that trial in court and before my arrest, I was in seclusion meditating under the empty cupola of a tomb, giving drops of my soup and the last crumbs of my bread to the ants.

When I was asked why I give my food to the ants, I answered: “Ants and bees are community-dwellers and this is my tribute to the marvellous social organisation ¹ 27 of these small creatures ….

Since the Middle East has contributed so much to Western civilization, perhaps it has some wisdom left over which we Westerners have not tapped or which we did learn long ago and then forgot. It is easy to forget basic principles of human behaviour at a time when technology is moving at a previously unheard-of pace and social devices are straining in vain to keep up with it. At such a time, the judgment of previous generations in older cultures goes unheeded because they are ignorant of the latest techniques. To refresh our knowledge of the basic truths about man’s relation to man, we must turn our attention to a more stable society, the adjustment of which has long since been tested and solved, before it too falls into the industrial and technological whirlpool and starts floundering about even more desperately than our own.

The first lesson that we learn is this: In any human society, all the goodwill and fine intentions in the world, all the most energetic efforts of the most gifted men will be utterly wasted if the system under which they live is wrong and they fail to change it in time before it is too late. What makes a system right or wrong?

These are subjective words. Translated into scientific terms, they mean systems of human life built to remain in permanent equilibrium in contrast to those which fall into maladjustment easily through defective social mechanisms. The social mechanisms which keep societies² that have them in order so that their individual members enjoy the greatest possible measure of happiness, consist of paired balances and automatic controls which stop trouble in its tracks. When an individual misbehaves so that his acts endanger others, traditional sanctions are at once invoked against him and the disorder contained. Traditional Islamic societies in the Middle East were kept in equilibrium by a large number of these automatic controls. A striking instance is how little the traditional monarchies of Muslim nations in the past have interfered with the private lives of their citizens whose mutual relationships have been channelled through many other kinds of local authorities, notably the religious. Such institutions as the Sufi brotherhoods, the Waqf, the trade-guilds, the village-council, the tribe, the clan and the family are revealed to the anthropologist as precious mechanisms which kept Muslim societies on an even keel and which in the dreary process of mechanization should be preserved rather than discouraged and destroyed.

If we study the details of Islamic laws and injunctions, we will soon see that these limit the individual only by denying him self-indulgence, extravagance and waste. Analyzing it as objectively as possible for an American anthropologist, the keynote to the Islamic way of life is that it provided a maximum goodness for human beings living in the crowded environment of the Middle East to a progressively deteriorating landscape.

An interesting item to study in this connection is the veiling of women. In Iran, women used to wear 29 the chuddar, the semi-circle of cloth which could be so draped as to cover the entire body except for the eyes. Many still wear them. These chuddars all look more or less alike. An attractive young girl can go out in the streets in a chuddar without drawing attention which might lead to trouble for herself, her husband or her parents. Marital arrangements in Islamic societies do not depend on chance meetings in the street, as is often the case in the West, but upon careful negotiations between families.

At the same time a middle-aged lady, whose clothing is threadbare, can appear in a similar chuddar and feel no shame while a wealthy woman will have no opportunity to display her finery and excite envy. The chuddar is thus a great social leveller, extremely useful in a land of overpopulation and potential social tension. In Arab lands, women used to disguise their figures in similar fashion.

One more example of Muslim sagacity may be seen in their ability to live gracefully with little furniture. The old-fashioned Arab or Persian removes his shoes when he enters a room, leaving them at the door. He can do this simply and unostentatiously because his footgear has been designed for this purpose. Thus he will neither wear out the rugs or trample them with mud. In the interior of a Muslim’s home enclosed by bare white walls and roofed by a lofty ceiling, an Oriental rug is a thing of beauty. In a Western drawing-room, whose walls are covered with paper printed in loud designs, whose ceiling is low and whose floor is cluttered with chairs, tables, radio cabinets and sofas, such a rug is wasted. Wool for rugs in the Middle East is cheap and locally produced. Wood for 29 tables, chairs and beds, is expensive, scarce and most of it must be imported. Rugs, mats and cushions give rest to the weary and chairs and beds are not needed.

One can feel just as comfortable and be just as dignified on the floor as in a chair. If a King or Khalif sits squatting on a rug, he is not doing anything which his humblest subject, equipped with a reed mat of his own plaiting, cannot also do.

When the King or Sultan prepares for a meal, he washes his hands first. This again is something that his poorest subject can afford to do and in a society whose eating habits were developed before the germ-theory was discovered, it shows considerable hygienic wisdom.

Once his hands are clean, the host can serve food to his guests with his fingers with little fear of contamination. Performed in an atmosphere of dignity, warmth and intimacy, the simple and personal act builds bonds between the men eating from the single common bowl which can never be forged over the Western banquet table.

“Thus Islamic civilization anticipated in many ways the human brotherhood and the One World for which we now yearn for—a world in which the only passport and visa that a human being needs to travel from place to place or to buy or sell his merchandise is his quality of being human, in which tribal and central governments exist only to keep the peace, in which travellers and wandering students are welcomed, sheltered and fed gratis along their way, in which education is free and most honoured and valuable possession which a man can attain is wisdom. If we in the West can once more on a larger scale achieve these things, we will have them derived profit from this civilization built upon austerity.”* 30 *Caravan: The Story of Middle East, Carleton S. Coon, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1951, pp. 342-350.

One of the most dehumanizing aspects of our technological civilization are the mass-media—cinema, television and radio—which in their soul-destroying commercialism, degrade and impoverish all human relationships.

Writes a well-known American newspaper reporter for The New York Times in recalling her childhood during the 1920’s:

I liked our dining room better than any other part of the house. It was the one spot we gathered at least long enough to eat. Our family possessed much of the spirit of the popular song, “You Can’t Take it with You!”—each one rushing off in his own frantic direction.

Meals were usually accompanied by the radio’s full blast.

Almost every room, except the bathrooms, boasted a radio.

“What, no radio?” we exclaimed to my little sister Sally, when she became old enough to listen to her own type of programmes and then we went out and bought her a small radio.**

A well-known Pakistani politician describes the rich cultural atmosphere in the home of her girlhood (about 1928) prior to the introduction of the mass-media there:

Although Muslim girls rarely received higher-education in the formal sense, those who had a literary bent and wanted to, did acquire a wide knowledge of poetry, literature and history. This was possible because their homes possessed such an atmosphere that they learnt just by living in the midst of it. For poetry was the breath of our cultural life and literary discussions were the accepted and established way of spending leisure time

**Fight Against Fears: the Story of my Psychoanalysis, Lucy Freeman, Pocket Books, New York, 1951, p. 145.

31 among the educated. In every family, there would be at least one or two women poets. Fathers, brothers, and other male relatives were always ready to encourage this by patiently explaining difficult passages or lending the latest book of poems or criticism so that it is not difficult for girls to develop literary taste. It was in this manner that I myself pursued my studies. In fact, we knew and certainly had read a great deal more thoroughly than young people do now because reading is no longer the sole recreation for children. Radio and cinema now claim much of their leisure and even those few who do read, do not achieve the same mastery over literature—whether in Urdu or in English—because they rarely read a book twice while we chewed and digested it so that it became part of our thinking and our imagination and we lived for days and months in the world created by the magic of the author’s pen.

Most of the reading I did on my own but whenever my father had the time, he asked me to read aloud while he and my mother listened. I remember those evenings so well. We would be sitting in the garden; the air would be filled with the heavy fragrance of Mogra flowers, mixing with the clean fresh smell of new earthenware water jugs.

My mother would be reclining on a charpoy twisting Mogra flowers to wear round her hair and on her wrists and my father and brother sitting on the wicker chairs. There would be enough light to read by and as the shadows fell, an oil lamp would be placed on a table which would throw sufficient light on the book and yet not break the magic of the twilight. My father would be listening carefully, correcting my pronunciation and explaining the meaning of words I did not know. A lively discussion would follow on the merits of the book. Such quiet and happy evenings are a thing of the past. Addiction to radio, television and cinema on the part of the children and a much heavier round of social activities on the part of the parents have put an end to it.*

*From Purdah to Parliament, Begum Shaista Ikramullah, Cresset Press, London, 1963, pp. 29-30.

32

The mass-media not only spread corruption and amorality in the name of “entertainment” to the most remote village but it is the greatest enemy of religion, art and culture and unsurpassed by any other institution in history in its effectiveness of converting people everywhere to the materialistic outlook on life.

Depersonalization through the mass-media is not a grim, deliberate or coercive process. It is induced by economic and sensual rewards and not experienced by the listeners and viewers as dehumanization at all though the symptoms are clearly visible. Most of the people who are nourished by the pap of the mass-media, never had solid food on which to cut their teeth. They feel vaguely restless and dissatisfied but do not know what they are pining for and could not chew or digest it if they had it. Now let us view the consequences of this mass recreation-radio, television and cinema. Producers of films, radio and television programmes do not deliberately seek to lower the taste of their fare. They seek to provide for a model “average” of tastes which through advertising, they try to make as close as possible to the mean average.

Consumers of the mass-media are treated as a crowd in the sense that their individual tastes are not catered to. In the attempt to satisfy all (or at least as many as possible), individual tastes it cannot help but violate others, for there is really no such thing as an “average person” with “average tastes.” Averages are but statistical composites. A radio or television programme while reflecting nearly everybody’s taste to some extent, rarely satisfies anybody’s taste completely. In this sense, the individual’s taste is debased. The very nature of the mass-media excludes art and requires it to be replaced by popular mass-culture. Standards of the films and radio and television programmes are subject only to the requirements of entertainment. What is deemed “correct” is merely what pleases most of the audience. They sanction whatever does not upset or offend the audience and 33 nothing else. By its very nature, the mass-media must exclude the genuinely beautiful and artistic (except occasionally the classics), for art is bound to differ from the customary moral and aesthetic view, at least as it takes shape in the minds of the audience. When filmed or broadcast, the creations of the playwright or novelist cannot deviate from the accepted standards and they must be entertaining and conform to the taste of the audience-they can never form it.

High culture in our civilization was cultivated in special institutions-courts, monasteries, churches, universities, by the elite of society who devoted their lives in patronizing the arts and were neither isolated nor surrounded by the masses demanding entertainment.

There was no need and no temptation for the artist to do anything but to create beauty on his own terms. The relations between the artists and the public were so personal that one can hardly speak of an impersonal market in which one sold and the other bought entertainment and recreation. In both high and folk culture, before the introduction of the mass-media, each was an autonomous universe, be it the court or the village, and relied on the particular cultivators and inventors of its arts and sciences no less than the latter relied on their patrons. Whatever the patron’s tastes and demands, they were personal and not “average” tastes or demands. Folk culture of the peasant village also developed without professional or commercial help. Both high culture and folk culture grew from within the intimate close-knit groups and remained within them.

High culture was entirely dominated by an elite who with their much higher than average prestige, power and income dominated politics and society in general. This elite also determined what was to be produced culturally.

With the industrial revolution and the introduction of the mass-media the elite as a group lost its power. The great mass of consumers now determined what was to be produced. One can now only become a member of the elite by producing the goods which sell best. With respect to culture, the elite neither imposes any taste nor cultivates one of its own. It merely markets and helps “homogenize” and then distribute popular culture—which appeals to the “average” of taste, through the mass-media. The impact of mobility and the methods of mass-production and mechanized communication have caused the power of individual consumers to wane. But the power of the consumers as a crowd has risen and that of the producers as a group has dwindled.

With the invention of the mass-media, a mass-market for culture became possible. The same economy that mass-produces automobiles indulges in the mass-production of entertainment. Producers of popular culture supply this new mass-market. Popular culture does not grow within a group. It is manufactured by one group—such as Hollywood—for sale to an anonymous mass market and thus it must lose in spontaneity and individuality what it gains in accessibility and cheapness. The creators of popular culture sell entertainment and produce with sales always in mind.

The artist who attempts to create art in its true sense is no longer insulated from the demands of the mass-market by an educated, cultivated elite and there are no longer stable, isolated peasant villages in which folk culture could grow.

Today’s movie producer, singer or writer is less dependent on the taste of the individual customer, village or court than was the artist of yesterday, but he does depend far more on the average of tastes and he can influence it much less. He need not cater to any individual taste—not even his own. He caters to an impersonal market. He is not involved in a conversation. He is like a speaker addressing a mass meeting and attempting to curry its favour.

All the mass-media in the end alienate people from personal experiences and intensify their emotional and moral isolation from each other, from real-life experiences and from themselves. One may turn to the mass-media when lonely or bored. But addiction to radio, television and cinema, once they become a habit, increasingly impair the capacity of the individual for meaningful experience. The dependence on the 35 mass-media feeds on itself, establishing a vicious circle as much as other addictions do.

The mass-media do not physically replace individual activities and contacts—excursions, travel, parties—but they impinge upon all. The portable transistor radio is taken everywhere—from the park, seashore to mountain-top—and everywhere it isolates the listener from his surroundings, from other people and from himself. Furthermore, it is beyond our individual power to escape from the noise.

Canned music is piped into restaurants, shops, cafes, hotel lobbies and public means of transportation, even taxis. You can turn off your radio but not your neighbour’s nor can you silence his transistor or the television set in the restaurant. Fortunately, most modern people do not seem to miss the privacy of their thoughts, the cost of which is even more beyond the average income than the cost of individuality.

The constant announcements, arpeggios, croonings, sobs, bellows, brayings and jingles, draw us to some faraway world at large and by weakening our ties with our immediate surroundings, makes us feel lonely when in a crowd and crowded even when alone. Whatever the quality of the particular radio or television programme, the very fact that one after the other they must be absorbed continuously, indiscriminately and casually, trivializes all. Even the most profound of experiences, articulated too often on the same level, is reduced to a cliché. The impact of each of the offerings of radio and television is thus weakened by the programme which precedes and follows it. But the impact of the stream of all mass-media offerings whatever their quality is cumulative and strong. It progressively lessens the capacity to experience life itself.

Genuine art deepens the perception of reality but popular culture veils it, diverts from it and eventually becomes an insurmountable obstacle to experiencing it. It is not so much an escape from life but an invasion of life first and ultimately evasion of life altogether.

Most mothers, well knowing that the mass-media can absorb energy, often lighten the drudgery of restraining the mischievous 57 activities of their children by permitting them to enjoy the vicarious experiences on the television screen. Television tranquillizes children by means of substitute gratifications for real experience.

Manufactured activities and plots are offered to kill the child’s hunger for experiencing life. They effectively neutralize initiative and pervert the imagination. But the early introduction of de-individualized characters and situations, offers no satisfying models on which to cast their imagination. What is wrong with the violence of the mass-media is not that it is violence but that it is not art—that it is meaningless violence which thrills but does not gratify the emotions. The violence and desire to experience life and its meaning is displaced and appears as a desire for meaningless violence.

But the violence which is ceaselessly supplied by the mass-media cannot ultimately gratify because it does not satisfy the repressed emotions.

Why are the vicarious experiences offered by the mass-media so spurious and unsatisfying?

Genuine art discovers and awakens the sleeper. Art intensifies and deepens perception and sharpens our experiences of the world and of ourselves. Artistic revelation need not be concerned with social problems. It may be purely aesthetic. But it can never be a pure illusion if it is art. Far from distracting from reality, art is a form of reality which strips life of the superfluous and extraneous and lays bare its essentials, permitting us in the most profound way to experience them. Because popular mass-culture is an illusion, it falls short of emotional gratification, detracting from life and from real gratification. Yet substitute gratifications, habitually resorted to, incapacitate the individual for real ones.

It may seem paradoxical to describe mass-popular culture in terms of emotional repression. Far from repressed, it first strikes one as utterly uninhibited. Yet the paradox disappears if we assume that the uproarious din, the raucous noise and the shouting, screaming and sobbing, are attempts to drown out the shriek of unused human capacities, of repressed individuality as it is crippled into nullity and meaninglessness.

18

The television drama may massage the tear-ducts and thrill the senses. The mechanized assaults on the centres of sensation are produced by the mass-media.

We are diverted temporarily and in the end, emotionally exhausted but not satisfied. Direct manipulation of the emotions can relieve tension as does masturbation but like masturbation, it is a very poor substitute for the real thing. It does not involve reality but counterfeits it. Sensations and emotions directly stimulated and discharged without being sifted through the intellect are debasing because they do not involve the whole individual in his relation to real-life experiences. When one becomes habituated to ignoring reality and individuality in favour of meaningless excitement, ultimate emotional gratification becomes impossible.

Once our fundamental impulses and instincts are thwarted beyond retrieving, once they are so deeply repressed that no ³ awareness is left of their aims; once the yearning for a life with meaning has been lost as well as the capacity to experience it, only a void remains. Life fades into tedium and diversion, however frantic, can relieve it only temporarily but never overcome the boredom which stems from nonfulfilment. Though the bored person hungers for things to happen to him, the tragedy is that when they do, he empties them of the very meaning for which he unconsciously yearns by using them as mere distractions.

In popular culture, even the Second Coming of Jesus Christ would be just another barren “thrill” to be watched on television until the comedian, Milton Berle, comes on. No distraction, entertainment or recreation of radio, television or cinema can cure boredom just as the company of the bored cannot relieve the empty feeling of loneliness. The bored person is lonely for himself, not as he thinks, for others. He misses the individuality, the capacity for experience from which addiction to the mass-media has deprived him.

Hence his sufferings are unrelieved and his yearning for emotional satisfaction remains insatiable. Whatever the formula, nothing can be more tiresome and boring than the cheerless pursuit of pleasure and happiness. Days pass 38 slowly when they are empty; one cannot distinguish one from the other. And yet the years go by swiftly. When time is endlessly killed by the mass-media, one lives in an endless present until one’s life comes to an end without ever having been lived, leaving the victim to exclaim: ‘I have wasted time and now doth time waste me….’⁴

Art and present-day technology

Art and present-day technology are intrinsically opposed to each other and the all-encompassing impact of the mechanical accounts for the reasons why modern civilization is so barren aesthetically.

Traditional literary and artistic standards have always placed high value on permanence, uniqueness and enduring universal value of artistic creation.

Such aesthetic standards were appropriate in a world of handicraft and relatively small-scale taste-forming elites. These same standards in no way enable one to adequately relate to our present situation in which astronomical quantities of goods are mass-produced, distributed and consumed which are in varying degrees all expendable, replaceable, and lack any unique value or intrinsic truth. Thus today’s artists neither work for a tiny cultured elite or take seriously the idea that permanence is any virtue. The future of art no longer lies with the creation of enduring masterpieces.

Rather, modern artists work only for the short-term. Accelerated changes in present-day life brought about by technological progress require an array of symbolic images of man which will match the demands of constant change, fleeting impressions and a high rate of obsolescence. Many artists today are working with engineers and scientists in the hope of exploiting the latest technological processes for their own purposes, symbolizing the gigantic technical thrust into society. Speed has become the norm, constant movement 40 during every minute of experience and it is the task of modern artists to create this new reality.

Thus we find artists from France, England, the United States, Sweden, Israel and elsewhere creating kinetic images. Their creed is perhaps best expressed by the Israeli artist, Yaakov Agam who says: “We are different from what we were three moments ago and in three minutes more we will again be different. I try to give this approach a plastic expression by creating a visual form that doesn’t exist.” In kinetic modern art, the image appears and disappears but nothing is retained. The final culmination of such efforts is the creation of new centers of entertainment known as “fun-palaces” where the total environment changes continually.

At these nightclubs, the pleasure-seeker plunges into a space in which lights, colours and sounds change their patterns constantly. In effect, the patron steps inside a work of kinetic art. The most famous of these fun-palaces, the Cerebrum is located in lower Manhattan. For an hourly fee, the guests are admitted into a white high-ceilinged room. There they strip off their clothing, don semi-transparent robes, sprawl comfortably on richly padded white platforms. Attractive male and female “guides”, similarly nude, offer each guest a stereophonic headset, a see-through mask, to view from time to time balloons, kaleidoscopes, tambourines, plastic pillows, mirrors, pieces of crystal, marshmallows, slides and slide projectors. Rock n’ roll music, interspersed with snatches of television commercials, and street noises fill the ears. Bubbles drift down from machines on the ceiling. Hostesses float through, spraying the guests with a variety of fragrant perfumes.

As the music grows more excited, guests and guides begin to dance on the platform and the carpeted walkways that connect them. Lights constantly change colour and random images wrap themselves around the walls, guests and guides. The mood shifts from cool at first to warm and friendly and then erotic. Whether one regards this as fun or not depends on the individual, but the over-all direction is clear. In art as in 40 everything else, modern man is racing towards impermanence. Man’s relationships with symbolic imagery are growing more and more temporary.⁵

The puritanical values of Islamic culture regard with disdain organized recreation and entertainment perhaps more than any other known historic or prehistoric society. The devout Muslim’s attitude towards life is serious and sober and the teachings of Islam place their emphasis upon the faithful discharge of one’s duties to God and to one’s fellow man rather than the right to leisure.

Recreation for the devout Muslim is simple, informal, personal, inexpensive and not excessively time-consuming. This may include such innocent pleasures as sitting in the garden enjoying the fragrance of the flowers, frolic with one’s wives and children, conversation with congenial friends of the same sex on subjects of common interest, story-telling, poetry-recitations etc.

Although during the darker periods of Muslim history, some voluptuous monarchs and a few rich epicurians in the cities indulged in wine-drinking and employed singing and dancing girls, entertainment never became in Muslim culture, the gigantic enterprise that it is today.

The extraordinary mobility brought about by urbanization and mechanization has resulted in that unique product of super-industrial society—the modern nomad—who has no enduring ties with any place or any people, including his blood-kin. In the process of mechanized mobility, the family is shattered to bits and the integrity of all human relationships broken.

41 Here is how one young American house-wife, a veteran of eleven moves in the past seventeen years, describes the process: “When you live in a mobile neighbourhood, you see endless changes taking place. One day a new postman delivers the mail.

A few weeks later, the girl at the check-out counter of the supermarket disappears and a new one takes her place. Next thing you know, the mechanic at the gas station is replaced. Meanwhile a neighbour next door moves out and a new family moves in. These changes are taking place all the time. When you move to another city, you break all these ties at once and you have to start life all over again. You have to find a new pediatrician, a new dentist, a new car mechanic who won’t cheat you and you quit all your organizations and start anew. It is the simultaneous rupture of a whole range of existing human relationships that makes repeated job-relocation a great psychological strain for many. The more frequently this cycle of job relocation and moving occurs in the life of the individual, the shorter the duration of the human relationships involved.

Among significant sections of the population, this process of repeated moving from one city to another is now occurring so rapidly that it is totally devastating to all ties to people and places. The knowledge that no move is final and that one will have to change jobs soon and be again relocated works against the development of enduring human relationships. Each time the nuclear-family moves, it also tends to slough off a large number of relations, friends and acquaintances. Separation does not always end all relationships immediately. At first there may be an eager flurry of letters back and forth. There may be occasional visits or telephone calls. But gradually these decrease in frequency and finally stop. With each move there is a deadly attrition. Indeed much of the social activity of individuals today can be described as search-behaviour—a relentless process of social exploration in which one seeks out new friends to replace those who are either no longer present or who no longer share the same interests. And the interests of mobile people in the modern world, subjected to increasing specialization, shift and change quickly.

42

The superficiality of friendships in modern mobile society is graphically illustrated in the following significant episode:

A curious thing is our talent for being extremely friendly without saying anything to each other. I remember a conversation between two American businessmen in my office which went like this:

“Jim! Where you come from? I haven’t seen you in—I guess it has been about a year and a half….”

“Just about that, Bill. A year and a half at least.”

“What are you up to, for goodness sake?”

“I’ve been in Washington D.C. and now I’m going back overseas.”

“Always on the move!”

“Well, I guess I am. I just thought I’d come down and have a chat with you before leaving.”

“It’s great you did. How’s your family?”

“Fine, Bill. How is yours?”

“They’re fine too.”

“The years go by, don’t they?”

“They sure do!”

“Well……”

“Well……”

“Well, I guess I’d better be moving along.”

“It’s been wonderful talking to you, Jim. Look, before you get on the plane, why don’t you come down for another talk?”

“Yes, I will, boy! You can count on that!”⁶

The unlimited opportunities of mobility brought about by mechanized transportation by undermining the foundation of all enduring kinship ties and life-long friendships, wrecks all sense of moral responsibility and integrity of character which for the religious man, is all in this life which really matters.

43 These destructive influences throw wide open the doors for committing delinquent acts of all kinds without any remorse or shame, especially illicit sex.

Each spring an immense lemming-like migration begins all over the eastern United States. Singly and in groups, burdened with sleeping bags, blankets and bathing suits, tens of thousands of American college students toss aside their texts and follow a highly accurate homing instinct that leads them to the sun-bleached beach of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There for approximately a week, this teeming milling mob of sun and sex-worshippers, swims, sleeps, flirts, guzzles beer, sprawls and brawls on the sands.

At the end of this period, the bikini-clad girls and their bronzed admirers pack up their belongings and join the mass exodus out. Anywhere near the booths set up by this resort city to welcome this rambunctious crowd, one can now hear the loudspeaker booming: “Car with two can take rider as far as Atlanta!” “Need ride to Washington!”

“Leaving at 10 P.M. for Louisville……”

In a few hours nothing is left of the great beach-and-booze party except thousands of cigarette butts and beer-cans littering the grounds and several million dollars in the cash registers of the local merchants who regard this annual invasion as a tainted blessing that while threatening public sanity tremendously enhances their private profit.

What attracts the young people to Fort Lauderdale is more than an irrepressible passion for sunbathing or is it mere sex, a commodity easily available elsewhere. Rather it is a sense of freedom without responsibility. In the words of a 19 year-old New York co-ed who made her way to these festivities recently:

44 “You’re not worried about what you may do or say there because frankly, you’ll never see those people again!” It is just this great diversity of temporary interpersonal relations which is characteristic of moderns as they race further ahead towards super-industrialism.

This is precisely why saints, sages and seers are non-existent today—for dignity, nobility and virtue must be based on the concept of permanency and tranquility in the social and moral order—qualities conspicuously absent from our mechanized life.

Here is a poignant illustration of the high quality of character which distinguished our ancestors and made Islam the dominant power in the world.

Muhammad Tughlaq left no sons but his first cousin, Firoz Shah was at once elected in 1351 to the throne of India by the chiefs of the army then fighting in Sind and after defeating the rebels, he had no difficulty making his rule secure. It was characteristic of the merciful and pious disposition of the new king that after burying his cousin with full honours, he then, with tireless energy and patience, sought out the victims of Muhammad Tughlaq’s cruelty or if they were dead, their kin and endeavoured as far as he could to make amends for their sufferings and compensate them for their losses. When this was done, he collected the attested documents in which they had admitted the reparation they had received and expressed themselves satisfied. All these papers he himself placed in the grave of the tyrant. After that he prayed to God for forgiveness, and begged Almighty Allah to bestow mercy in the Hereafter to my cousin, my patron and my friend…. ⁷

45 Here is a true portrait of a God-fearing man which

would be almost impossible to find in the mechanized West or even the “developing” Muslim countries today.

It also exposes the hollow fallacy of “Progress.” Rather the quality of human character and human relationships has not at all progressed since the days of Firoz Shah but rather deteriorated to an appalling level.

The amoral scientists and technological experts will not tolerate any limits on their activities. Here

are some of the nightmarish horrors technological “Progress” has in store for us:

Imagine, for example, the implications of biological breakthroughs in what might be termed “birth-technology.” Dr. E.S.E. Hafez, an internationally respected biologist at Washington State University, has publicly suggested on the basis of his own astonishing work on reproduction that within a mere ten to fifteen years, a woman will be able to purchase a tiny frozen embryo, take it to her doctor, have it implanted in her uterus, carry it for nine months and then give birth to it as though it had been conceived in her own body. The embryo would in effect be sold commercially with the guarantee that the resultant baby would be free of genetic defect. The purchaser would also be told in advance the colour of the baby’s eyes and hair, its sex, its probable size at maturity and its probable intelligence quotient. Indeed, it will eventually be possible to do away with the female uterus altogether. Babies will be conceived, nurtured and raised to maturity outside the female body. It is clearly only a matter of years before the work begun by Dr. N. Daniel Petrucci in Bologna and other scientists in the United States 47 and the Soviet Union make it possible for women to have babies without the discomfort of pregnancy. The impact of the new birth technology will shatter to pieces all traditional notions of sexuality, motherhood, maternal love, child-rearing and education.

A fierce controversy is already raging today among biologists over the problems and ethical issues arising out of eugenics. Should we try to breed a superior race? We can now imagine remaking the human race, not as a farmer slowly and laboriously “breeds” his herd of cattle, but as an artist might, employing a brilliant range of unfamiliar colours, shapes and forms. Given our fast-accumulating knowledge of genetics, we shall now be able to breed whole new races of blue-skinned people—or for that matter, green, purple or orange. In a world confronted with the issue of racism, should we now strive for the artificial breeding of all people with the same skin colour? If that is what we want, we shall no doubt soon have the technical means for bringing it about. Or should the biologists work for even greater diversity than now exists? We are hurtling towards the day when we shall be able to breed artificially in the laboratory both inferior and superior races. We shall be able to manufacture apartheid scientifically, including humble servants, super-athletes for our games, research scientists with I.Q. ⁸ and diminutive bodies. We shall have the power to produce races of morons or of mathematical savants. We shall also be able to breed babies with supernormal hearing and vision, super-ability to detect changes in odour or supernormal

muscular or musical skills. We will be able to create sexual super-athletes, girls with many mammaries like animals—perhaps even four or five breasts—or only one—and countless other varieties.

Human body styles will come and go just like modern clothing fashions.

Mention is now made in scientific journals of breeding men with gills like fish or implanting gills in them for efficiency in underwater environments. Clearly a gibbon is better adapted than a man for life in a space-ship. A platypus with a 48 prehensile tail is even more so. Gene-grafting may make it possible to incorporate such animal features into human stocks. We are also going to modify man experimentally through physiological and embryological alterations and by the substitution of machines for his various parts, including even the brain. If we want a man without legs for space exploration, we don’t have to breed him; we can just chop them off; if we want a man with a tail, we will find a way of grafting it on to him.

How would parents like to intervene in the ancient designs of nature for man? Would you like to consult the geneticist on the sex of your offspring? It will be as you wish. Would you like your son to be six feet tall; seven feet, eight feet? These will be easily handled by us. Even the timeless patterns of growth, maturity and aging will be subjected to our design. We know of no intrinsic limits to the human life-span. How long would you like to live?

Not merely motherhood but the whole concept of parenthood itself is in for a radical revision. Indeed, the day may soon dawn when it is possible for a child to have more than two biological parents. Dr. Beatrice Mintz, a developmental biologist at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia, has grown in the laboratory what are coming to be known as multi-mice—baby mice each of which has more than the usual number of parents. Embryos are taken from each of the two pregnant mice. Then these embryos are placed in a laboratory dish and nurtured until they form a single growing mass. This is then implanted in the womb of a third female mouse. A baby mouse is born that clearly shares the genetic characteristics of both sets of donors. The result is a multi-mouse born of two pairs of parents. If multi-mouse is here, can multi-man be far behind?

If a couple can actually purchase an embryo from the market, then parenthood becomes a legal and not a biological matter. We shall need in the near future a whole new vocabulary to describe these new kinship ties or rather the lack of them. Furthermore if human embryos are offered for sale, can a commercial corporation buy one? Can it buy ten thousand, a million? Or can it resell them? And if not a commercial concern, how about a non-commercial research laboratory? If we buy and sell living human embryos like any other commodity, are we back to a new form of slavery? To continue to think of the family of the future in conventional terms is to defy all reason.

Faced by rapid social change and the staggering implications of the scientific revolution, super-industrial man may be forced to experiment with novel family-forms.⁹⁴

Thus is the entire human race as we know it, threatened with extinction in the near future by irresponsible, delinquent scientists who, like children playing with dynamite, feel accountable to nothing.

In the three short decades between now (1970) and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future.

Citizens of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations, many of them will find it increasingly painful to keep pace with the incessant demands for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon.

Western society for the past 300 years has been caught up in a fire-storm of change. This storm, far from abating, now appears to be gathering force. Change sweeps through the highly industrialized countries with waves of ever-accelerating speed and unprecedented impact. For the acceleration of change brought about by rapid technological innovations does not merely buffet industries or nations. It is a concrete force which reaches deep into our personal lives, compels us to act out new roles and confronts us with the danger of a new and powerfully disturbing mass psychological disease—Future Shock.¹⁰

The big question all thoughtful, intelligent, educated persons throughout the world are asking: How best can the human being—individually and collectively—adapt to this Change? And anthropologists pose the question: How best can traditional non-European societies adapt themselves to the challenge of modern technology and all its consequences? The answer is simple. The human race cannot adapt! Unrestricted technological development is opposed to all the instincts inherent in human beings since God created man. Technology cannot triumph in the future unless the biologists, in their diabolical activities, can destroy the human race or transform mankind into living machines.

We scientists are creating a new society—not merely a changed society. Not merely an extended or enlarged version of our present society—but an entirely new, unique society which never existed before. Unless and until we understand this, we shall destroy ourselves in trying to cope with Tomorrow. There are indisputable signs of a sick social structure, a society that can no longer perform even its most basic functions in accustomed ways. It is a society caught in the agony of revolutionary Change….

Biology is marching irresistably towards the day when the astronaut will not merely be buckled into his space-craft but also become an integral part of it. Our aim is to make the spaceship itself a wholly self-sufficient universe in which algae¹⁵ grown for food, water recovered from body-waste, air is recycled to purge it of the ammonia entering the atmosphere of the craft from urine. In this totally enclosed, fully regenerative world, the human being becomes an integral part of the 50 on-going micro-ecological process whirling through the vastness of space. Perhaps it would be simpler to provide life support in the form of machines that plug into the astronaut. He can be fed intravenously a liquid food compactly stored in a remote pressurized tank. Perhaps direct processing of liquid body waste into conversion to water could be accomplished by a new type of artificial kidney built as part of the spaceship and sleep could be induced electronically. One after the other, the body-functions of the human become interwoven with, dependent on and part of the mechanical functions of the capsule. In quite a different field of robotology, there is great progress too. Technicians at Disneyland in California have created extremely life-like computer-controlled humanoids capable of moving their arms and legs, grimacing, smiling, glowering, simulating fear, joy, laughter, crying, shouting, screaming and a wide range of other emotions. Built of clear plastic that is almost indistinguishable from the texture of human skin, the robots chase girls, play music, fire pistol-shots, and so closely resemble human forms that visitors routinely shriek with fear, flinch and otherwise react as though they were dealing with real human beings. The purposes to which the robots in Disneyland are put may seem trivial but the technology on which they are based is highly sophisticated. It depends heavily on knowledge acquired from the Space Programme and this knowledge is accumulating rapidly. There appears to be no reason why scientists cannot go forward from these primitive and trivial robots to build humanoid machines capable of extremely varied behaviour and to make them indistinguishable from humans except by means of elaborate tests. At that point we shall face the novel experience of trying to determine whether the smiling, assured humanoid behind the airline reservation counter is a pretty girl or a carefully-wired robot.¹¹

52

Fortunately, all of this is still in the realm of science-fiction, however this fiction may threaten to become a reality within the next generation.

So much for the “advanced” countries. Now what about the so-called “developing” countries? What do the moral, social, economic and political consequences of the technological revolution have to offer the peoples of Asia and Africa?

If we are to measure the degree of modernization achieved by a given system’s distance from its original Islamic base, we may pose the question: which of the two variants of modern government—the democratic or the dictatorship—should be considered as more advanced? The two most publicized endeavours of the military dictatorships in the economic field—namely, the agrarian reform and industrialization—may ultimately prove to have much more a social than an economic significance. The social gain in emancipating the masses of peasantry from traditionalism may have been of such magnitude as to overshadow the economic set-back. Yet always in human affairs, a price has had to be paid for these advances. In the underdeveloped countries, the price has been felt most in the political sector. The erosion of democratic institutions and the centralization of power in the hands of those who control the means of coercion (i.e., the army, police and the revolutionary militia) have caused the states to fall into a virtually savage era of the lawlessness of the jungle. While in the case of Egypt under Nasser, the military dictatorship has afforded a reasonably long period of enforced political stability, the dictatorships in Syria and Iraq under the Ba’athist Party, have resulted in a never-ending series of coups, counter-coups and purges which have taken a heavy toll by eliminating group after group of the intelligentsia from constructive work for the society and by producing a climate of uncertainty and violence.

Probably more profound has been the penalty paid in the 52 cultural and psychological sectors. Absolute political power has tended not only to corrupt those who wield it but also to produce attitudes and habits of servility, mutual suspicion, character-twisting hypocrisy and evasion from the ever-tightening web of government control among the subjects of such a system. Although the monarchies in traditional Muslim states suffered for many centuries from such negative features, it nevertheless possessed a number of powerful traditional safeguards which mitigated the rigours of despotism and its harmful psychological effects upon the people. Such safeguards are simply non-existent under the modern dictatorships which are steadily and consistently reducing the area of autonomy enjoyed whether by individuals or organizations be they universities, trade-guilds, unions or religions. The press becomes nationalized; hence even a slim opportunity for independent opinions to be heard which was available under the monarchies—plus strict censorship—is lost. Teaching of the social sciences in the educational institutions, if permitted at all, becomes converted into Marxist indoctrination. History is rewritten according to the requirements of nationalism to suit the needs of the moment. All this is accompanied by increasing glorification over the mass-media of the irrational official mystique mixed with an assertion of the regime’s “scientific” approach to socio-economic problems.¹²

Technological society is conducive to totalitarian dictatorship on the one hand and lawlessness, violence and moral anarchy on the other. If everything must be constantly changing all the time in a growing accelerated pace and nothing at all is regarded worthy of preservation from the past, then logically, without any norms, values or objective ethical standards on which to base social life, it is virtually impossible for any government to function.

53 If the Constitution and law of the country enacted yesterday are regarded as obsolete tomorrow and the rising generation refuses to accept authority of any kind, there can be nothing but total anarchy. Laws, even “secular” law, cannot remain law, if they must change every day. And the military, essential for the country’s defence against enemy attack, cannot function without strict authority, discipline and the willingness of the soldiers to make personal sacrifices. When people are preoccupied with entertainment and recreation over the mass-media and obtaining the latest comforts and conveniences technology has to offer, they cannot be expected to accept authority, discipline, self-sacrifice and altruism in the face of enemy attack from without or social conflict and disintegration from within. When a people has reached this advanced stage of decay, no technological miracle can save them.

Science as it developed under Muslim rule was far more humane than the science we know today. Here is an autobiographical excerpt from an eminent Persian physician—Burzuyah—who although originally of the Parsi faith, influenced through his association with the great medical research centre at Jundishapur, Muslim doctors by practising his calling profession in strict conformity with Islamic ethical ideals:

My father belonged to the soldier class; my mother was the daughter of a family of distinguished priests. One of the favours that God gave to me was that I was the favourite child and that I received a better education than my brothers. My parents sent me when I was seven years old to elementary school.¹³

54 As soon as I could read and write well, I returned to my parents. Then I decided to study Science. The first branch of Science that attracted me was Medicine. It interested me so much because I knew how excellent it was. The more I learnt of it, the more I liked it and the more eagerly I studied it. As soon as I had reached such a degree of proficiency in medicine that I could think of diagnosing and treating patients, I began to deliberate within myself, for I observed that there were four things to which men aspire. Which of these ought I to aim at—money, prosperity, fame or a heavenly reward? What decided my choice was the observation that all intelligent, educated people praise medicine and that no religion condemns it. I also used to read in the medical books at Jundishapur that the best doctor is the one who sacrifices his personal gain for the welfare of his patients and seeks only a reward from God in the Hereafter. So I was determined to follow this lead and to aim at no earthly gain lest I be like a merchant who sells for a valueless bauble a ruby by which he might have gained all the riches of the world. I also read in the medical works of the ancients that if a physician aspires to gain through his profession a reward in the Hereafter, he will not lose his share in this world’s goods. Thus he resembles a sower who carefully scatters his barley grain in his field and for whom there springs up together with his harvest of barley, all sorts of useful herbs.

So with the hope of reward in the Hereafter, I set out to treat the sick. I exerted myself in the treatment of patients whom I expected to cure. And no less did I strive in those cases where I could not hope to effect a cure. In such cases, I tried at least to make their sufferings more bearable. Whenever I could, I used to attend to my cases in person. When this was not possible, I would write out for them the necessary prescriptions and give them medicines. From no one do I ever demand any fee or other reward.

And none of my fellow physicians did I envy who equalled me in skill or surpassed me in fame or fortune if he were lax in his standards 55 of honesty in word or deed.¹⁴

Contrast these humane ideals with the callous treatment poor patients can expect to be meted out to them in Lahore’s hospitals today.

Great numbers of people in Lahore die without receiving any medical attention.

Countless unfortunate patients are too poor to consult general practitioners. The fees doctors demand are so exorbitant that only the rich can afford to patronize them. And medicines cost ever so much more than the man in the street is able to pay. There are only four big hospitals in Lahore which always remain overcrowded. It is just not possible for the poor to get into any institution established for the care and treatment of the sick and injured as they have neither the money nor the influence to receive treatment at these hospitals. Even those who manage to gain admittance into one of these places, face additional hardships and sufferings. The medicines doctors prescribe have to be purchased by the patients. As most poor folk do not budget for this emergency, they are not in a position to receive medical treatment of any sort. Food served to poor patients is very bad. Vegetables and meat in the hospital kitchens are not even properly washed or cooked. There is nobody in authority to supervise the kitchens. Poor patients needing blood transfusion in urgent surgery cases, more often than not fail to receive the life-giving plasma. Their relations do not come forward to donate blood for them and hospitals have no adequate stocks to cater to the requirements of all patients. Many desperately ill patients lie outside the hospitals on the grounds with nobody to look after them. Some of them eventually die. It is not always possible to establish their identities; their relatives do not bother about them.¹⁵

57 This is what modern technological civilization means to the common man in many “developing” countries.

“Until the West interfered, life on the Asiatic continent was fairly well stabilized except for upheavals growing out of the slow fluctuation of climatic changes. The peoples of Asia had developed ways of life ecologically suited to their natural environment and this brought into being some of the world’s greatest civilizations producing religion, art, architecture and literature that we in the West cannot claim to have surpassed. One of the most cogent indications of the soundness of these civilizations is their long duration—far longer than any Western society has been able to survive. It is probable that their power to endure lay largely in the simplicity of their structure. If one part were destroyed, the rest lived on unperturbed and slowly re-established itself in the devastated area. But modern Western civilization is so complex that if it becomes sick in any of its members, so interdependent are its parts that it may well perish,”¹⁶

“What happened in 1965 during the catastrophic electricity power-failure in New York which lasted for more than twelve hours? Some switches went wrong and the whole system broke down. Multitudes of people trapped inside elevators, underground in the subways, or on the top floors of high-rise buildings were panic-stricken. You couldn’t move! You couldn’t produce! You couldn’t do any work! Now just picture the integrated technological system under which we 58 Westerners live. We have an incredibly complicated interdependent organization. Just cut it at a few points (like an Arab oil-embargo) and it’s gone! I’m not even talking about the destruction of human life but of the destruction of institutions—a whole civilization.¹⁷ Destruction of human life would follow.”

Modern technological civilization conflicts in its aims and ideals not only with Islam and the traditional way of life of the Muslims, but with all the other higher religions of the world and all cultures and civilizations based upon spiritual values. All the higher religions of the world—be it Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism or even Hinduism have the following traits in common:

(1) All of them are based upon transcendental theological, ethical and social values. The structure of society and its laws are meant to be stable, if not eternal, at least intended to last a very long time. They are all hostile to innovations which upset the moral and social order. Change when it did occur was gradual and limited in scope. None of them ever upheld Change and indefinite material progress as supreme virtues.

(2) All of them preach the ideal of a simple, chaste life and are implacably opposed to luxury, self-indulgence and extravagance.

(3) All of them uphold the sanctity of human life (and even animal life) and the sanctity of the human personality and abhor the perversion of human 59 nature for destructive purposes.

(4) All of them seek to preserve and strengthen family and kinship ties and oppose sexual delinquency. All of them uphold the ideals of marital faithfulness and filial obligations to preserve the family structure.

(5) All the higher religions of the world seek to maintain harmony and equilibrium between man and nature.

In a material sense, the assembly-line shaping, packaging and distributing of persons, of life, occurs already. Most people in technologically advanced countries perch unsteadily in mass-produced impermanent dwellings throughout their lives. We are born in hospitals, fed in cafeterias, married in hotels, after terminal care we die in hospitals, are shelved briefly in funeral homes and are finally incinerated. On each of these occasions—and how many others!—efficiency and economy are obtained and individuality and continuity stripped off. If one lives and dies discontinuously and promiscuously in anonymous surroundings, it becomes hard to identify oneself with anything that is meaningful and worthwhile… ¹⁸

The conclusion is therefore inescapable that the wholesale uncritical adoption of modern science and technology, based as it is upon naked atheism and materialism, can serve only those purposes destructive to our heritage, our culture, our society and our faith.