Sharia

Mention the word sharia in any conversation in virtually any Muslim country (especially Pakistan) and there are generally two fairly typical reactions. One reaction is that this is an excellent step and should be implemented immediately. What is the delay? The other reaction is that this would be an unmitigated disaster that will take us back centuries and cause ruin and havoc not to mention that all the "fun" would be taken out of life. Reactions in a non-muslim (typically Western) country are generally even more violent to the very thought of Sharia. Why do people have reactions like this?

There is a lot of confusion over exactly what is Sharia. The average Muslim living in a Muslim country is generally unaware of what Sharia is. At this point, let me add a disclosure note. I am not a religious scholar and will not attempt even the beginnings of an answer to the question of what Sharia is. The point of this post in any case is not to try and define Sharia but to try and explore why people have such polarized views to this subject. This confusion has not stopped people - both Muslim and non-Muslim from weighing in on the subject. Interestingly enough, a Google search on what is sharia returns sites that seem to be written primarily by non-Muslims. The main aspect of Sharia that seems to arouse ire one camp and draw explanations from the other is the alleged treatment of women under the law.

The biggest confusion regarding Sharia in the minds of Muslims concerns its status. Is it sacred and therefore fixed for all eternity or can it be adapted to circumstances while staying within certain parameters. There is a good article by Dr. Riffat Hussain which seeks to address this issue. Personally I feel that religious scholars, who are the best authorities on Sharia, have shirked a major responsibility in disseminating information regarding Sharia in a readily understandable format. This has resulted in major misunderstandings and confusion amongst the general population in Muslim countries. These misunderstandings are then seized upon by many in non-Muslim countries who use them for essentially propaganda purposes.

On Maturity

What is maturity? A simple enough question but when I started thinking about it, I realized that it was actually not easy to answer. So why am I writing about it? Indeed, why even ask the question? Good questions. So here's my two bit worth on this subject.

Maturity is something that is never explicitly talked about. Very few people - barring perhaps philosophers - even think about. Yet almost every adult assumes it. One of the unstated definitions of being an adult is achieving a certain level of maturity. If asked if the desired level can be defined more specifically, I doubt whether anyone can answer. Maturity, or rather level of maturity, is clearly a subjective matter. It is difficult to answer because it is a behavioral state. It reflects how a person behaves in different situations whether pleasant or unpleasant. Does one become rapturously happy at the smallest piece of good fortune or suicidally depressed at the smallest bit of misfortune? Maturity is essentially appropriate behavior for the circumstances. But it is not just physical behavior. It is primarily emotional behavior. A person's emotional response to a given situation is far more important than the physical response. Frequently, the emotional response exhibits itself in physical behavior but more often it does not. This is specially true for unpleasant circumstances.

Why ask this question? Too often people exhibit less than mature behavior. It also seems to me that the overall maturity level of the world is going down. A side effect perhaps of the increasing popularity of the escapism inherent in sports and entertainment industries. Perhaps this is something worth thinking about.

Leadership

What is leadership? Most of us can recognize a leader or leadership qualities when we see them. Yet we would be hard pressed to define leadership conclusively. Perhaps this is because different people have different ideas of what constitutes leadership. Leadership can occur in almost any situation. We tend to think of it in grand terms. Someone who leads a nation through a difficult time or gives a grand vision - a destiny you could say - to fulfill. However, leadership occurs in more modest environs as well. Corporate leadership is a well documented phenomenon. Most of the large corporations in the world today were built up through corporate leadership. Many of the improvements in the quality of life were built up through someone taking up an issue and working for improvement in that area.

If defining leadership is hard to pin down, then perhaps we can look at some of the characteristics of leadership. In my view, leaders have a vision for the future towards which they work for. It is a vision that they can inspire in other people as well. Someone who has vision but is unable to inspire it in others fails to become a leader. Leaders need not be charismatic in the strict definition of the word. They do need to bring others round to their vision and that has to be more than strictly utilitarian. Some of the best corporate leaders like Jack Welch and Bill Gates have had very clear ideas of where they want their organizations to be.

More later.

On Leadership

Where have the leaders gone? Why are we (and by we, I mean nearly every nation) being led by people who in earlier generations would have been considered pygmies? Tony Blair - a leader? Come on! George W. Bush - a leader? Don't make me laugh. Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Putin; these people cannot be labeled as leaders. The developing countries are led by non-entities except in cases where they are being led by criminals. There are a few exceptions. Obama may shape up to be a leader although the jury is out on that right now. At least he has the ability to inspire people which is one of the hallmarks of a leader.

It was not always thus. The world has experienced leadership - true leadership in living memory. It is said that the moment brings forth the man. Look back into the past. At both moments of existential crises for nations and moments of great importance to them, true leaders have stepped forth - men who inspired their nations through difficult and uncertain times. Abraham Lincoln during the US civil war, Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, Winston Churchill during World War II, George Marshall who helped formulate the Marshall Plan which helped Europe to rebuild after being devastated, Mohandas K. Gandhi - an instrumental figure in the Indian independence movement, Mohammad Ali Jinnah who almost single-handedly created a country, Kemal Ataturk who foiled plans to dismember Turkey and helped the country onto a modern path and many others. There are also negative leaders: men who inspired their nations and then led them onto a destructive path. People like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin - a man who played a destructive role in that he caused the deaths of approximately 20 million in his reign but who also played a positive role in that he inspired his people to resist German invasion in World War II.

So, my original question: where have the leaders gone? The caliber of the political leadership since the 70s has gone into a serious decline. The people who have come to power are not leaders. They have not inspired their nations to new heights or to new ventures. They are pygmies who are obsessed with day to day management and the public opinion. It is a reflection of the times that when someone is thrown from power, or even when that person is in power, his/her ratings in the opinion polls is seriously taken as a measure of success. In fifty years time, no one will remember what the opinion polls said about say Tony Blair. Instead he will have been judged on his record, his actions during power. Personally I doubt anyone will think of Blair as a leader. Today, we are faced with serious economic, ecologic, cultural and political crises. Many of them are large enough to cause massive disruption individually and we are faced with a whole host of them all at once. The times call for inspiring leadership. Someone who will galvanize and inspire the population. What do we have instead? Mostly moral pygmies who inspire nothing but distrust and contempt.

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• President Bill Clinton on FDR (time.com)

A Matter of Trust

There is a news report that Chinese trust prostitutes more than politicians and scientists. Apparently, an online survey was published by Insight China magazine. It seems that 7.9% of respondents consider prostitutes to be trustworthy putting them in third place behind farmers and religious workers. Scientists get a bad rap coming in close to politicians and teachers. Least credible were secretaries, real estate developers, agents, entertainers and directors. An editorial on China Daily on this rather surprising finding can be found here.

On the face of it, this result is quite surprising. But think about it. What is trust? Trust can be defined as a person on whom or thing on which one relies. Wikipedia defines trust as a "relationship of reliance." No moral judgment needs to be made in matters of trust. In this respect, it is paradoxically not surprising that prostitutes can be viewed as more trustworthy than say politicians. After all, when someone visits a prostitute, he knows exactly what he is getting. There are no undertones. There is a straight forward commercial transaction taking place with both parties knowing what they are getting. Of course I am not condoning prostitution in any fashion. I am simply making a statement regarding the nature of transaction.

Politicians are expected to do anything to stay in power so it is not surprising that they are not trusted. What about scientists.?These people are supposed to advance the state of our knowledge in an impartial manner. Supposedly facts rule in matters scientific. A single contrary observation is sufficient to disprove scientific "fact" that may be held for centuries. Take the case of swans. For centuries, it was a proven "fact" that all swans are white. Countless observations over the years had established this beyond any doubt. Until the first black swan was sighted. Immediately the statement "all swans are white" was disproved. So in this highly objective field, why do scientists have so little credibility? Part of the reason can be that over the years, there have been many exposes that have reduced the credibility of scientists. There is a mystique of scientists that they are supremely objective and pursue knowledge for its own sake; unmoved by monetary considerations. However, scientists are also human and many have slipped from the pedestal that they have been placed on by the average layperson. There have been too many cases of scientists colluding with companies to suppress negative research or scientists fudging their results or even stealing other people's work.

What is certain is that trust takes a long time to build and a very short time to be destroyed. What is also certain is that untrustworthy individuals and institutions ultimately suffer the ill effects of their actions. Often it seems that such people can get away with murder. However, fate has a habit of creeping up unawares and striking when you least expect it.

Is There a Purpose to Life?

Is there a purpose to life? For many people, this is probably a stupid question. We are alive. Not just that, we happen to belong to a species that can indulge in abstract thought such as this question. But really, is there a purpose to life? Perhaps more relevant can be can we supply a purpose to our lives? Surely there has to be more to life than just work and shopping. This is what the economic paradigm of the last thirty years has been telling us. We are nothing more than consumers whose sole purpose in existence is to shop and to do that we need to work like dogs. Marketing efforts have convinced a large number of us (maybe all of us) that buying products can make us cool and sexy and help us attract hot chicks (or guys) and make us successful and powerful and what not.

I don't know but this sounds rather sad and pathetic. Work like a dog during the week. Party desperately in the weekend in a sad effort to make it seem worthwhile and don't forget the shopping!

Environmental Responsibility

For far too long, we, as a species, have treated our natural environment in a most cavalier fashion. It is now acknowledged that humans are responsible for the death of mega fauna that used to roam in both the American continents and in other places like Australia and New Zealand. the initial assumption of people in first entering a new land and discovering a rich and seemingly inexhaustible menageries of animals was to assume that the numbers were infact inexhaustible. The discovery that they were not would come when species were driven to extinction and this would inevitably be followed by a crash in population numbers. However, hunter gatherer societies would subsequently adjust themselves in rough harmony with the resources subsequently available.

This calculus started to change with the development of agriculture. Farming allowed a sharp increase in population numbers which in turn allowed some members of the community to start specializing in non farm activities and this eventually led to the development of urban civilization. Pre-industrial farmers were not able to control many variables that affected them. Mortality rates remained at a high level. The development of areas under centralized rule (aka empires) would result in stable conditions conducive to population growth. The population level would slowly increase until some external or internal shock disrupted the system at which point the level would fall often dramatically. Think of the fall of the Roman empire and the Black Plague. Recovery would then restart from this lower level. Pre-industrial societies were also not capable of truly intensive utilization of resources. So a low level of utilization and periodic shocks to the system would allow the natural world to recover. This is not to say that things would return to the state they were in before humans came in. Enough of a respite would be given so that resources, specially animals, were not in real danger of being driven to extinction by human activities.

Several things changed this state of affairs. One was the development of gun powder. Guns allowed for far greater efficiencies in killing both humans and animals. While the earliest guns were cumbersome machines prone to difficulties, these were soon improved upon and the 19th century saw rapid improvement in the quality and capabilities of guns. A second element was improved means of transport. This enabled large number of people to move from one area and settle in another. These settlers came equipped with guns which enabled them to fight off the challenge posed by more primitive societies. Guns also enabled them to harvest animal resources more efficiently. Concurrently with technological developments was the development of a mind set which saw the world as subservient to humans. This viewpoint viewed anything not in the service of the community to be a waste. All of these changes combined with the ancient mind set that viewed natural resources as inexhaustible.

Industrial development resulted in vastly enhancing the impact that humans have on the planet. Since the mind set did not change, this resulted in a dramatic increase in the extinction rate of species and hugely intensified harvesting of natural resources; this resulted in extraction without regard for the environment and resulted in huge losses of forest cover (to cite one example). The net result is that our activities threaten the health of the planet and therefore threatens our continued existence. At the very least, the civilization that we have built cannot continue as before. We are dependent on the biosphere. No one has yet figured out how to survive independently of the natural world.

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• Humans 'driving Earth's extinction' (guardian.co.uk)