Opinion

Early this year, the Ministry of Endowment in Egypt decided to do away with hiring of a muezzin for each of the 4,700 mosques in Cairo. It instead connected their minarets to a centralized azan from the Ministry which requires not more than half a dozen muezzins, given the desire to have a different muezzin for each of the five daily prayers.   It was all thanks to the incorporation of the information technology where synchronization is possible. It not only did away with the job of nearly 4,700 muezzins, but also eliminated cacophony owing to the slight difference in timing at each of the mosques. Even Dubai and Abu Dhabi are replicating the experiment.


Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam has introduced the computerized tokens for deity’s darshan which does away with hundreds of men regulating serpentine queues. The Christian Cemeteries in Chennai have introduced the webcasting of funerals for those who may not be able to personally attend the funeral but would like to view them at a deferred time.  Too boot, Christian cemeteries in Kerala have devised vault type burials in the scarce-short state.  


These are a few indications of shape of things to come. Science and technology continually dictate changes in products, processes, services and human needs, mores and even ethos. Religion is the most dogmatic sector where changes take longest to penetrate. But it cannot remain immune for long.


Just imagine the reaction of Muslim community if there had been a move to synchronise azan in big cities of India. It must have caused a ruckus with edicts and counter edicts declaring the legitimacy or otherwise of the move. It took decades for all to come to a consensus over the legitimacy of azan over amplifiers in the last century. Now that noise pollution is a major problem in urban areas, no one seems to be willing to take off the amplifiers.


New technology and concepts are making sweeping changes in all spheres. Jobs being closely linked to the quicksand economy are therefore called upon to imbibe changes. Universities and educational planners have to perfunctorily bring about changes in order to remain relevant to the market. Law, social sciences and culture too align themselves to the changing needs of the society while operating on the margins. In short, it is how the human civilization marches forward and human beings live through epochs and eras. Modernity fades into past to become antiquity.


Technological enterprises and the expanding service sector are transforming post industrial economy to one of information based production. Businesses are calling upon schools to conform to the needs of the market.


Just walk back memory lane three decades ago. It was an age of grinding stones, okhlis, blowpipes, copper vessels, gramophones, radios, typewriters, bicycles, lanterns, Mangalore tiles, mud water coolers, and alarm timepieces. Members of Takara community often roamed through our streets offering to rechip our heavy grinding stones. Dhobis came home to take donkey loads of clothes. Acrobats and the bioscope carriers were a great source of fun in an entertainment scare society then. Knife sharpeners set up their wheels around the street corners just as Sikkalgars visited housewives every quarter to revarnish the brass vessels.


New age appliances like mixers, blenders and instant mixes transformed our kitchens during 80s and 90s. Dhobis vanished as did their donkeys from our cities. Today Court complexes seem to be the last resorts of cacophonic typists. DTP centres now combine hi-tech print shops capable of even producing canvases for giant highway billboards.  Acrobats now survive on earnings from Dussehra melas.


Last month on a visit to Bangladesh, I was told that jute has no takers today. Jute bag industry is virtually closed. What happened? Economist Shafiullah at the Bangladesh Enterprises Institute informed me that jute bags were replaced by plastic bags. Secondly, orders for bags declined when ships acquired machines that pump and suck the food grains directly into and from the ship’s hull thereby eliminating the need for physical transfer of bags.


Khursheed Alam runs a computerized embroidery unit in Peenya Industrial area of Bangalore. He told me his unit has three computerized embroidery machines which can embroider 700 metres of cloth in 24 hours involving only three workers. This level of production would have taken him 25 workers if the machines were not computerized.


Around 1,000 hoarding painters were rendered jobless as Bangalore’s billboards came to embrace digitally printed canvases during the last five years. They look neat, brightly coloured and display perfect contours of the models. In the final analysis, tailors, painters, typists and embroiders of today are threatened with livelihood issues just as Takaras, Sikkalgars and acrobats of yore lost their jobs three decades ago.


Most EPABX telephone operators went out of jobs around the turn of the century when the old machines were discarded for new electronic phones. Computerization and incorporation of information technology is resulting in consolidation of several skills into few hands. Banks need less number of hands today as ATMs are reducing the across-the-counter operations. Newsrooms no longer require proof readers as computerization has combined the subbing and proofing operations.


Technology has its own pace. It is expensive when it is just out of the lab. Oldies scoff at it. Initially entrepreneurs and businessmen ignore it due to its cost factor. It then lures by its speed.


Half appealing, it still has few takers. Then it comes with the offer of replacing human hands and energy saving. Temptation is then simply difficult to resist. Inevitability knocks at the door once it is embraced by the competitor in business.


But today the challenge is not merely with livelihood. A whole host of issues stare into our eyes.  Muslims tend to be initially skeptical of the new scientific concepts.  They apprehend threat to their faith and resist it tooth and nail. They come round to accepting it when other communities have taken substantial lead in the sector and would have set the protocols for its use. Naturally, it is a situation of fait accompli.


It all emanates from the long ingrained tendency among the ulema to proscribe all new thinking under the omnibus doctrinal fiat of bidaa (innovation).  It led to stagnation and later regression in Muslim thinking from 14th century onwards.  No wonder then why the first observatory in Istanbul was destroyed in 1580 following the advice of the ulema. Even the first Ottoman printing press was idled in 1745.  This also explains why the printing of the first copy of the Holy Quran was undertaken not in a Muslims city, but in Hamburg in Germany in 1694. (ref. Murad W. Hofmann, Religion on the Rise, 2001, p. 38).


Little surprise when today we refuse to accept the scientific determination of visibility of moon (ruyath hilal) and make a mess of our festivals. Ironically, while data from observatories is relied upon for five-time salah, the same does not hold good for birth or visibility of moon. Even the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) directive with regard to travel by women is applied literally even though the mode of travel has changed from one of astride beasts through the desolate deserts to mass transport on recognized routes and schedules in the company of hundreds of passengers with known antecedents. 


Curiously, we easily get tempted to blame the West or the non-Muslims for our plight. Our regression, decadence and decay directly stems from smothering of the spirit of critical inquiry and arrival of taqlid (following). Hofmann very rightly observes: The Islamic world did not decline because of colonization, it was colonized because it had declined to the point of being colonizable.


(The author is accessible at maqbool_siraj@rediffmail.com)