In any field of knowledge, few significant advances have been made on the basis of faith alone. Even religion, that bastion of faith, invites believers to observe creation to increase their faith.
To assert, therefore, that faith can play a lead role in medicine is simplistic, even while the role of faith as an adjunct to mainstream treatment is probable, but remains open to conjecture. This is an argument, however, that owes its existence mainly to education. It also explains why the following of faith healers is composed in the main of less or uneducated persons. Yet, to deny the presence of a fair number of educated persons among those numbers would be naive… far wiser to question the education that leads people to indulge in such practices.
A questionable education is just one of many reasons why people are drawn towards faith healing. In Pakistan at least, mainstream or scientific medicine where available, is poor and hygiene in hospitals is far below the minimum requirement. Resultantly, the risk of say maternal death is over ten times higher than for instance in Denmark, according to UNICEF’s statistics.
Since faith healers claim divine intercession, it means that the doctor himself is invisible and can therefore be invested with powers as required. His tools are above human comprehension, unlike the mundane syringe or knife. A divine doctor is also beyond the human requirements of sterile environment, because he performs in mysterious ways to heal.
The whole process of healing is conducted on some intangible, spiritual plane where diagnoses and results are proportionately vague. To bring faith healing down to the level of shining chrome and tablets would be to shatter its mystique and by extension its power. Or so it is perceived.
In 1999, the American Medical Association published a study which concluded that “prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care” and recommended further studies to prove this. Meanwhile, the charm of faith healing remains in it being impossible to prove either its validity or its authenticity. For the layperson who may be suffering from xyz disease, it promises miraculous cures. Quite simply, it suits both patients, and a system which is too indolent to bring about the changes required for standardised care.
All this time of course, there are the casualties, the horrific death, for example of the innocent ten year old boy from Kasur suffering only from fever. His poor parents took him to a local hospital where his father claims he was not treated. So they took him to a faith healer, who said he was possessed of evil spirits. His cure was exorcism consisting of torturing the child, beating him violently around the face until the poor boy lost his eyesight. He was then taken to hospital where a few days ago, he died.
The faith killer, as he should be called, was initially arrested, but has subsequently been released on bail. It is worth considering how many countries would allow such a person to go free at this stage of an investigation.
A report in The National quotes Qais Aslam, an economic analyst, as saying that very often persons who claim spiritual powers are local landowners who use these supposed powers to enslave people, who then work for them without compensation. This exploitation, says Mr Aslam, is becoming increasingly common.
These ‘spiritual’ persons function without fear of reprisal, and their demands are increasingly diabolical. In Chiniot for instance, a pir asked a follower to bring him one of his wife’s body organs. The man killed his wife and removing her heart presented it to the pir.
It is almost impossible to comprehend the level of humanity of such persons, and yet harder to comprehend the level of inhumanity of a government that ignores such incidents and involves itself solely in brangling among itself.
No matter how you look at it, such occurrences are a crime… whether you look at the men who mislead poverty stricken individuals into such practices or at the fact that they are allowed to do so unchecked. Whether at the so-called spiritual persons who gain sufficient hold over the poor to lead them into a life of slavery or equally or at the people responsible for providing medical care, so mindless of their responsibilities, doing such a poor job, that patients and their desperate families are forced to resort to lethal alternatives.
As with every crime committed on a larger scale, these crimes have their roots in smaller cases, when perfectly average people advise other perfectly average people to drop valid treatment and switch to blowing on things and drinking holy waters and such.
But here I am straying into murky waters, certainly dangerous ones, so here I must end this column right about now.
