AN EXPERIENCE AT CLOSE QUARTERS

AN EXPERIENCE AT CLOSE QUARTERS

I sometimes wonder what is the point in teaching physics and mathematics to students when the clerics will teach thereafter all sorts of theological nonsense of Adam, Eve, Noah, doomsday, the hereafter, heaven and hell, and the call to prayer will interrupt my classes even when they are going on, for the discipline of the divine call far outstrips the discipline of academics that would make men and women of sterling material out of these kids at my disposal. This way we can never raise this community even with our best efforts for their best efforts are devoted only to the study of scripture and the language which is its vehicle.

Unless Muslims reform their ways and means to the demands of modernity, they will increasingly go behind in this evolutionary cycle with respect to the other advancing communities. Christians also hold on to their archaic beliefs but in their case such adherence is far less pronounced thanks to the Reformation and the Enlightenment which Europe and Christianity went through. But Islam has remained unreformed for the past fourteen hundred years, and, thus, Muslims find themselves in this peculiar predicament of religion holding centre-stage in an age when everything is being governed by science. My battle to enlighten the children continues but sometimes I feel really hopeless. Hope returns, though, soon and the work goes on.

Written by Sugata Bose