Of mediums and messages

Here, I have two headlines that relate to separate occasions. They reflect our capacity to simultaneously believe in ideas that are contradictory. It may not be as frightful as Orwell’s concept of doublethink. But it does reveal a sense of confusion about our national sense of direction.

First, the more recent headline. The lead story in this newspaper on Thursday said: “British system of education to be done away with: PM”. The other, smaller headline I saw in a newspaper a few days ago was: “Islamic TV channel will be like BBC”.

Both these headlines, we should assume, portray the good intentions of the present leader of Pakistan with which he wants to pave the road to Pakistan’s future. One is usually intrigued by the slogans that are raised by our leaders. Invoking Islam is obligatory. At the same time, the challenge to move forward in this age prescribes modern and essentially secular devices.

Be that as it may, we have here two fundamental issues that we have to deal with. One, and more important, is education. It is something that affects our prospects for not just progress but survival itself. And we have continued to talk about it, mostly in a mournful tone.

It is really a national tragedy that we have not been able to sort out this issue that would establish the foundation of our existence as a nation, despite the fact that we have nuclear capability and we boast about our military strength. The mere fact that more than twenty million children between the ages of five and sixteen are out of school in Pakistan is a matter of shame for us.

As every other government in the past had professed to be doing, this government is also aiming to reform the system, though the complication here is that education is a provincial subject. The focus now is on introducing a uniform curriculum in schools. It was in this respect that Prime Minister Imran Khan, speaking at a prize distribution ceremony for madressah students, said that the British rulers destroyed our education under a well-thought-out plan. Yet, English is the language of power and of the government and the medium of instruction issue has almost become insoluble.

Without going into why we were not able to repair the damage in more than 70 years of independence, let us move on to the other headline. It relates to a meeting Imran Khan had had on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York with the leaders of two other major Muslim countries, Turkey and Malaysia.

Imran Khan shared a picture of his meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Tweeter and wrote: “Our meeting in which we decided to set up a BBC type English language TV channel that, apart from highlighting Muslim issues, will also fight Islamophobia”.

Imran Khan referred to the proposed English language channel again on Monday and said it was meant to correct misconceptions and confront the challenges posed by Islamophobia. I wonder if it can be called the ‘PTM channel’, the obvious acronym when Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia are named in this order.

We should appreciate the concerns that the three leaders must have shared about the image of Islam and that of Muslim countries in the West against the backdrop of some incidents of terror attributed to Muslims. Imran Khan spoke about Islamophobia in his UNGA address as well. Incidentally, we have not had an opportunity to properly ‘deconstruct’ that long speech and the political situation in the country is heating up after Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s decision to begin his Azadi March on October 27. There is also new focus on the economy after a long meeting business leaders had with COAS Gen Bajwa.

As for the new channel, we already have Al Jazeera in English which had boldly been launched by Qatar to compete with the likes of BBC, CNN and Fox News. Apparently, the proposed project mentioned by Imran Khan has different objectives. Besides, the Muslim world is conditioned to be speaking in different voices and any endeavour to improve its image as a collective entity could be self-defeating.

The point I want to highlight is that BBC is still considered a role model by those Muslim leaders who are not willing to allow a professionally independent media outlet in their own countries. I do not have sufficient information about the state of the media in Malaysia but Turkey seems to have outdone Pakistan in gagging its dissident media.

It is hard to visualise what the proposed TV channel could do to achieve its purpose. For instance, how well would it be able to cover Yemen or the civil war in Syria? Will its talk shows have the Pakistani format in which political adversaries persistently chew the cud without any edification of the viewers? Sadly, the idea appears to be a non-starter.

One would hope that there are enough English language broadcasters to be hired. But most of them are likely to be dissidents in their own countries. When it comes to the medium of the channel, journalists from Pakistan, rather than from Turkey of Malaysia, would have a better opportunity for employment. So, is this good news for those Pakistani media professionals who have lost their jobs, the best among them because they are critics of the present arrangement?

Finally, Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia may have similar views on some issues and they claim to be democratic in their dispensation but there are gaps in how they project their ideologies, and their national priorities are also significant.

For instance, Erdogan may be leading an Islamic party but modern Turkey was built as a secular country. Malaysia’s is a plural society with no enemies across its borders. Mahathir Mohamad has said: “If you look throughout the world, most countries that quarrel with their neigbours try to solve their problems through violence and through wars, and in the end, both sides will lose”.

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com