My Take | Protests or riots, 2014 and 2019 were the biggest mistakes of this generation
No one really knows how or why a society works or doesn’t work, so don’t think you have a magic formula for it
True political believers are the most dangerous creatures. Analytically incompetent, historically ignorant and wholly dogmatic, they usually think they know it all, or the leaders they follow do. They are not only cannon fodder for forces much more powerful, sinister and way beyond their comprehension, but they willingly serve those higher powers, thinking they are doing good for mankind or at least their own community. These people scare me.
Whether they loudly shout “Allahu akbar” or democracy and freedom, it makes little difference. They want whatever they happen to think is supremely good and noble, and they demand it here and now.
A little knowledge, from a university degree or a religious school, makes them even worse. They know nothing but think they know everything, a direct path to achieving the most important thing in life – how an entire society ought to be run. Really, I should trust a bunch of 18-year-olds to carry out “the revolution of our times”. Thanks, but no thanks.
You think your society isn’t working because you see 10 per cent of society malfunctioning while being completely oblivious to how the other 90 per cent actually work to keep things afloat. In fact, from water to money supply, the most basic things in society that make your life liveable are something most of us are terribly ignorant about.
I have nothing against Islam or democracy. In fact, I have the greatest respect for both, among other political, religious or secular programmes for the organisation of societies and the guiding or unguiding of how people should or shouldn’t lead their lives. But for everything, there is a time and a place. Every society comes with a set of conditions that it inherits or develops over time, and they form the most complex of social networks.
They are also not necessarily – at least not immediately – conducive to this or that political programme from on high, whether you call it political Islam, Islamic theocracy, Anglo-American style democracy, or Hindutva (Hindu nationalism).
