Sitting in the dormitory of my university, sipping on my Red Bull, punching hard on the keyboard to let creativity flow into my essay, I rarely get to hear a knock on my door. However, this rarity seems being compromised.
Invitations to “dars” (religious preaching) in mosques and Imran Khan’s jalsas, have often been found guilty. Distracted too much to continue with my work at times, I have had the opportunity to attend both of these rarity-compromising events. Different places, different speeches, and certainly different faces; yet strikingly similar ideologies. Disrupting the status-quo, ending armed-operation against Taliban, and re-establishing the glorious Khilafat, are all but a few of their many similar agendas. What worries me is not the thought of two entirely different groups working upon very similar, radical principles, but instead the repercussions that it leaves by radicalising my university life.
While an environment of intellectual activism is always welcomed, religio-political intolerance is not. Grasping idealistic goals wrapped in awe-inspiring oratory, students having attended these meetings are all set to pass the word on. However, these disseminations are met with questions which their leaders had never been asked, or in a few cases, had failed to answer. This precisely is the breaking point for all constructive debate – lack of intellect.
For leaders like Imran Khan himself, who considers irrational student activists to be ‘suicide bombing’ their ideological stature, this must be a primal concern. With arguments based on marshy grounds, students often resort to the radical way out, pulling the others down for an upward move. This cut-throat, pointless argumentation has arrived at universities, like mine, which had been away from religio-political activism for ages.
For this charged up environment to sustain in its healthier form, religious and political leaders must work harder than now. Setting idealistic objectives alone wouldn’t do well enough. This superstructure of far-fetched aims should be supported by an elaborate base support, having foundation of religio-political philosophy, and pillars of rational approach.
As every irrational knock on my door is a suicide bomb on religio-political ideologies of leaders by the students, so it is on the institutional sanctity of my university, and on that of many others, by these political and religious leaders. It is high time for these leaders to realise that with fame comes responsibility, and their responsible attitude is already due.
AHMED LODHI
LUMS, Lahore