My nephew from London was concerned about the prevailing atmosphere in Pakistan . It took me some days to draft this instant reply to him and to convey my thoughts to others . Unfortunately , I had deleted his email inadvertently .

Before I write further , I wish to pen down three incidents . On the evening of December 16 , 1971 , the day the Pakistanis surrendered to India , I went to my French class to the National Institute of Modern Languages Islamabad (now upgraded to an university ) where I met a female friend who insisted on reading to me from a book ‘The thoughts of Mao Zedong’ which she was reading . That day I felt as if my body was being sawed . I tried to dissuade her from reading . Finally I told her that if we continue reading such books , Pakistan would have another shameful defeat. She asked me as to what should she read . Unknown to us , the Head Clerk entered the room and told that she should read the Holy Quran for a change . At that she volunteered to explain to me that she was not taught Islam at home .

A female colleague joined the Ministry of Commerce when I was working there . I came to know she had passed her adolescence in London . She smoked in the office and drank tea by gallons . Initially , she took no notice of yours truly and thought of me as if I was between a moulvi ( a Muslim cleric) and a mister . Gradually she became disillusioned of her other male colleagues . She became my friend much to the others’ chagrin . She once declared her agnosticism . I asked her which religions she had read and discarded . She had no answer . I told her that I would prefer if she read , understood and rejected all world religions . I further told her that she was not a pure agnostic. However , when I was about to leave for Umra , she begged me to pray for her which indeed I did .

My wife and I once went to our daughter’s parents day . As we entered the class , her class teacher was telling a child’s parents that she did not know the basics of Islam .

The British Prime Minister was informing a MP , Lady Astor, in the British ouse of Commons that the moral education of the children was not the duty of the Government alone . A similar reply was given to yours truly by my son’s Principal at School when I was discussing the behaviour of the School boys . He told me that the parents’ think that once they had their children admitted to school their responsibilities were over . The British Prime Minister Mr. David Cameron , learnt a lesson that the fault lies with the country’s education system after four days’ of rioting in England this year . Of course that lesson was bitter one and the remedy was the setting up of a Commission .

When I was a young officer in the Civil Service , the youth, fresh from college , then took great pride of their knowledge of European philosophers and political thinkers for example Kant , Voltaire , Rousseau , Goethe , Carlyle , Mills , Locke etc and quoted them profusely . The favourites among them were Karl Marx and Engels . They also took immense pride in calling themselves agnostic . They scarcely knew , consciously or unconsciously , that ‘agnosticism’ fell in the domain of ‘apostasy ‘ .It was the fashion among the educated classes then to call oneself ‘an agnostic’ . Then and now , I think like Mr. Cameron, the fault lies with the education system of Pakistan . I refer to the famous quotation of Lord Macaulay ‘ let us create a class of people , Indians in their origin and blood but English in their tastes and manners ‘.

I also refer to Lord Macaulay's address to the British Parliament 2nd February , 1835
'I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is the beggar , who is a thief .Such wealth I have seen in this country , such high moral values , people of such caliber, that I do not we would ever conquer ...this country , unless we break the very backbone of this nation , which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore , I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system , her culture , for if the Indians think that all that is foreign is good and greater that their own , they will lose their self esteem , their native culture and they will what we them , a truly dominated nation'.

Before the British came to the Indian Sub Continent , India had its own education system based on the knowledge of the Holy Quran (for Muslims only . For the Hindus Sikhs and other classes of people their own religious books ) , Arabic and Persian ( the court language ) . India had her own philosophers and political thinkers , for eg . Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (Mojaddad al Sani , Syed Ahmad Shaheed , Sir Syed Ahmad Khan , Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar and his brother , Maulana Shaukat Ali , Allama Iqbal , Syed Ameer Ali , the Agha Khan Muhammad Ali Jinnah , whose way of thinking was unlike the Europeans’ .The British ruled India for two hundred years . Those Indians who chose to learn English succeeded in becoming civil servants doctors or were called to the Bar. An Indian Lord Sinha , became a Barrister, judge and a Governor .

On the other hand , the Muslims in India were either resting on the Muslims glory or refused to learn English calling it an alien language . The efforts of an enlightened Muslim, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan , made little impact on their way of thinking . In the present day world , those Indian Muslims who acquire a modern education are quite successful in their lives .

For a child the first school is the mother’s lap . However , most parents in urban Pakistan ,wittingly or unwittingly , are guilty of neglecting the children’ moral education because often they have no time to attend to that . In an TV advertisement for a brand of shampoo , a small girl complains to her mother that the latter had no time for the former .

In the past , most parents in Pakistan were unlettered . However , some educated ones living in cities had knowledge of the children’ activities . They would discuss with the latter their subjects at school , college or university . Each had time for the other .The young learnt from the elders’ discussions . We had no TV or the internet . Now , in Pakistan , the parents and the children have no time for each other . We are rapidly aping the west in everything bad they do eg. shisha smoking , like , in India, every movie has dances aping Michael Jackson. When the young are at home , they are glued to the internet . I am not against an modern comfort but ‘there is nothing god or bad . But thinking makes it so ‘.

The nation’s backbone , which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and has been broken . It has lost its bearings . We are confused . The past history of the Indo-Pak Sub Continent is not taught to the Pakistani students any longer . They don’t know their heroes . They don’t know the Muslim heroes like Hazrat Ali , Hazrat Hamza etc. The Pakistan youth do not obey their parents .

However, all is not lost . Every cloud has a silver lining . More and more people especially the young are turning towards Islam.