Continued......
Revolution, 1979-1987
TO TELL THE truth. I had no interest in politics in the 1970s or much of the 1980s. From the time I had left university in 1975 until 1983. I had been so single-mindedly and obsessively involved in international cricket that I had no time to think about much else. Anyone who has played professional sport would understand how it completely takes over one' s life. One lives and breathes the sport. so intense is the competition and hence the focus. Over the years. I came to the conclusion that ' genius' is being obsessed with what you are doing. So I was too absorbed to worry about the consequences of Zia's military regime. his slow reversal of Bhutto's nationalization programme. or the turmoil in neighbouring Iran and Afghanistan. Life continued as normal for most people - the only ones who really felt Zia' s rule were his opponents. As the captain of the Pakistan cricket team I had a good relationship with Zia. He used to call me personally when we won matches and when. in 1987. he asked me on live television to come back out ofretirement for the sake of the country. I agreed. Only after his regime ended did I realize his devastating legacy and that. like so many of Pakistan' s leaders. he was motivated purely by his desire to stay in power and was oblivious to the country's decline. or the long-term consequences of his policies.
Amidst the steady erosion of the country's political and social fabric. the Pakistani people drew solace from its success in cricket. During the 1970s and 1980s our team started growing in strength to the point that we could match our former colonial masters. For teams like Pakistan. India and the West Indies. a battle to right colonial wrongs and assert our equality was played out on the cricket field every time we took on England. My friends. and two of my greatest opponents on the cricket field. Sir Vivian Richards from the West Indies and Sunil Gavaskar from India. were both examples of sportsmen who wanted to assert their equality on the cricket field against their former colonial masters. I know that the motivation of the great teams produced by the West Indies in the 1970s and 1980s was to beat the English. For Viv in particular. it was about self-esteem and self-respect. the two things that colonialism deprives the colonized of.
Sport was not the only way to demonstrate post-colonial independence. I little realized how far the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 would transform the Muslim world. However. it was a watershed moment in the way the West would view the Muslim world. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan later that year. putting Pakistan in the frontline of the Cold War. few of us fully grasped the extent to which that too would affect Muslim thinking - in the world in general and Pakistan in particular. I had visited Iran in 1974 when I went to stay with a school friend from my time at the Royal Grammar School. Worcester in England. Seeing the economic and cultural divide of Iranian society and women in miniskirts in the bazaars of Tehran surprised me. In today's Lahore and Karachi I have seen a similar disparity - rich women going to glitzy parties in Western clothes. chauffeured by men with entirely different customs and values. But at the time I had never seen people behave in such a westernized way in a Muslim country and was shocked by their disregard for the cultural mores of the masses. I remember the look on the faces of the stallholders in the bazaars as these women in short skirts sashayed past. The Iranian Islamic Revolution a few years later was to draw heavily on the support of the bazaaris, who formed the backbone of a traditional. devout middle-class in Iran that felt threatened by the Shah's attempts to impose an alien culture upon them and enraged by his role as a puppet of the West. In Pakistan, however westernized people like me were, when we visited our ancestral villages or went into rural areas - or even the old city of Lahore - we had to respect local customs and sensitivities. The women in our family would wear the chador (a cloth covering the head and shoulders, leaving only the face exposed), or the burka (a long garment covering the whole body). Even in Lahore my mother always covered her hair when she went shopping in the bazaar. To this day most women in Pakistan wear the traditional shalwar kameez with dupatta (headscarf). Only very recently have younger urban women started to wear jeans.
The Iranian Revolution was a reaction in part to rapid westernization and secularization campaigns in Iran by Reza Shah (the ruler of Iran from 1925 until he was forced to abdicate by the Allied powers in 1941) and then his son Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The latter was a brutal autocrat seen to be beholden to the United States after he was restored to power following a 1953 CIA-backed coup to overthrow nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh had had the temerity to stand up for the rights of the Iranian people and seize the country's oil production, which had hitherto been controlled by the British government's Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Muhammad Reza Shah's sweeping social and economic changes alienated the poor, the religious and the traditional merchant class who grew resentful of an elite enriched by the 1970s oil boom. Meanwhile, there was a growing class of rural poor who had moved to the cities in the hope of benefiting from the petrodollar-fuelled economic growth but found themselves unemployed, consigned to the slums and increasingly under pressure from inflation as the economy overheated.
The revolution led by Khomeini promised to return power to the people and restore religious purity to Iran. The events of 1979 in Tehran and the establishment of an Islamic state highlighted to the world the revolutionary potential of Islam and its power to threaten the established order in the Muslim world. The overthrow of a tyrant was welcomed jubilantly by ordinary people in Islamic countries, most of whom were also suffering under the anti -democratic rule of leaders they viewed as Western stooges disconnected from the economic realities and religious faith of their people. As with the Middle East revolts in 2011, a sense of euphoria rippled across the region. The broad base and strength of a movement that had toppled such a powerful US-backed regime was also inspiring to people long resentful of colonial interference and Western hegemony. And it had been achieved through relatively peaceful means, with mass demonstrations and strikes.
In Pakistan there was tremendous excitement, and I could sense this when I returned from playing cricket in England in the summer months. Since independence we had already been governed by four different constitutions. We had run through parliamentary democracy, Ayub Khan's 'presidential democracy', which was effectively a military dictatorship, economic liberalization and martial law. Yet here was Khomeini standing up to the West with a new system that was both Islamic and anti-imperialist. The political Islam of the Iranian Revolution filled the void left by the failure of Arab nationalism in the Muslim world. Socialism had been discredited and communism had never really taken off in a culture where religious faith is such an intrinsic part of life. As the Iranian slogan went: 'Neither East nor West'; Khomeini had forged a new path that owed little to either the Western powers or communist Russia. And he explicitly presented his ideology as an exportable political solution to the entire Islamic world.
Consequently, the West was terrified the Muslim world had reached a new turning point. At stake were Western puppet regimes in oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia - whose royal family Khomeini openly criticized. In the same way that the West turned a blind eye to corrupt regimes that claimed to safeguard the free world from the evils of communism, from then on, autocratic rulers could manipulate Western fears in order to clamp down on any political opposition in the name of fighting Islamic fundamentalism. (The 9/11 attacks on the United States further reinforced this tendency.) It was also at this point that the West started sending NGOs into Muslim countries to encourage secularization - often in the name of liberating our women or promoting human rights. Whenever there is unrest in an Islamic country, the old fears about 'Iranization' or 'Islamization' of the country in question are raised by the West. Only recently, in early 2011, this happened when the people of Egypt and Tunisia toppled their dictators. Other countries, too, faced internal dissent but dealt harshly with it; however, in Yemen and Bahrain, the actions that in Libya would lead to NATO intervention were allowed to continue as the regimes were deemed pro-Western.
Zia, keen to legitimize his unconstitutional takeover of Pakistan, felt the mood created by the Iranian Revolution and responded accordingly. His predecessor, the Oxford- and Berkeley-educated Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had used religion to counter his Western secular image by pandering to the religious parties. Bhutto's 1973 constitution confirmed Pakistan's identity as an Islamic Republic, the teaching of Islam was made compulsory in schools and a Council of Islamic Ideology was set up to advise on Islamic legislation. He had declared the Ahmedi sect non-Muslims. His critics, though, only hardened their demands, campaigning for the introduction of more Islamic laws. Zia cashed in on the opposition to Bhutto from the religious parties, which equated secularism with anti-Islamism. He was prepared to go much further than Bhutto, pledging on coming to power in 1977 to make Pakistan an Islamic state. His version of the Nizam-e-Mustapha (the System of the Prophet) aimed to overhaul penal codes inherited from the British by bringing them into line with Sharia law. Emboldened by events in Iran, from 1979 he introduced still more reforms, 'Islamizing' the economy and education system. He tried to introduce interest-free banking, imposed the automatic deduction of zakat (a proportion of one's wealth which every Muslim has to contribute annually) from bank accounts and invested in madrassas. The Hudood Ordinance imposed strict punishments for crimes, including adultery, and its abuse by a corrupt police and judicial system undermined the legal status of women, especially in the lower strata of society. Zia revamped so many laws, but failed to introduce true Islamic social justice; in fact his regime actually promoted inequality and corruption. His political use of Islam was aimed more at capturing the mood of the time.
Zia also enforced Islamic rituals and promoted traditional dress codes in a bid to 'Islamize' the country; many years later Musharraf attempted to overhaul Pakistan and turn it into a modern, liberal secular state by encouraging the use of English and Western dress, which he thought would westernize Pakistan. Zia's 'Islamization' and Musharraf's 'Enlightened Moderation' failed in their aims, as in such situations people follow the latest diktats, but inwardly carry on as before. Both Zia and Musharraf failed to understand that imposing outward observances will neither instil a sense of religious faith nor propel a country into the twenty-first century.
General Zia's 'Islamization' programme received another boost with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Practically overnight he became a key Cold War ally of the Americans, who now forgot their qualms about backing a military dictator (perhaps this was the origin of the saying that you need the support of the three As to lead Pakistan - Allah, the army and America). It was another example of the US's ability to pick and choose when to object to evil despots, or not, while lecturing the developing world on the universal importance of democracy and human rights. Fearful that the Soviets might push through Afghanistan to reach the Arabian Sea in the Gulf and choke off vital oil supplies, the CIA, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states - through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence, the lSI - funded, trained and armed thousands of militants to fight them. Many of these jihadis stayed on in Pakistan after the war. unwanted by their own governments. (Having created these foot soldiers to do jihad against communism. the United States and its allies hunted them down as al-Qaeda members andjihadis a decade after the Soviet withdrawal.) At the time. there was a general feeling in Pakistan that the war against the Soviet occupiers was a just war and people made tremendous sacrifices. With my journalist friend Haroon Rashid. I met so many young men in Peshawar who had done time in Afghanistan; 'guerrillas' they might be called now. but they were heroes fighting against occupation. a romantic cause that drew idealists from across the Muslim world in the way the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War had attracted thousands of non-Spanish volunteers in the 1930s. They became rapidly disillusioned with the way the groups changed at the end of the war. However. unlike Musharraf after 9/11. Zia never allowed the CIA to spread its network within Pakistan. It was the lSI who trained the militant groups. funded by the CIA.
Jihad is a vital concept in Islam; indeed it is the most important concept in terms of an Islamic society. Jihad is about standing up to injustice and it keeps a society alive and vibrant. In Islam. there are three types of jihad: the first is the individual struggle to purify one' s soul of evil influences. the second is to strive for justice through non violent means and the third is the use of physical force in defence of Muslims against oppression or foreign occupation. A Muslim must stand up for justice. for any human being's rights. regardless of their religion. When a society does not stand for justice. it dies. Two million people marched against the Iraq war. because they felt it was unjust; were they Muslims. they would have called this protest jihad. After all. the Quran repeatedly points out that 'God loves not aggressors'. And if everyone in a society stands up for justice. then their rulers have to listen. In the 1980s the concept of jihad became glamorous because of the fight against the Soviets; now it is a word associated with terrorism. There remains nothing wrong with the concept of jihad. a struggle for 'doing the good and forbidding the evil'; but like all noble concepts it can be misused. For many men drawn to Afghanistan. this was a clear-cut case of helping the Afghans fighting foreign occupation. The tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan faced for the first time in their history an influx of foreign fighters. gathered from the Muslim world to fight the Russians. Thousands of Saudis. Yemenis. Egyptians. Algerians. Tunisians and Iraqis flocked to Afghanistan. often passing through Pakistan. trained by the lSI and funded by the CIA. A Saudi billionaire who had sacrificed a life of luxury to fight for the Afghan people was one who drew particular admiration. He was Osama bin Laden; my friend the lawyer Akram Sheikh remembers seeing him at a reception at the American embassy in Islamabad in 1987.
I went to a fundraising ball for the mujahideen in 1983 at the Cafe Royal. a bastion of London's wealthy elite once frequented by Winston Churchill and Oscar Wilde. It was a very fashionable cause to support. with campaigners in the UK including Lord Cranborne. an old Etonian Conservative MP. and in the United States. Joanne Herring. the Texan socialite portrayed in the book and film Charlie Wilson 's War. The legendary Pashtun pride. courage and lack of self-pity inspired their backers. In 1985. Ronald Reagan famously introduced members of the mujahideen as 'the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers' during their visit to the White House. Amongst them was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. leader of the Hezb-e-Islami political party and paramilitary group. A key figure in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets and the main recipient of foreign funding for the cause. he is now waging ajihad against NATO forces in Afghanistan. who as far as he is concerned are foreign occupiers just as the Russians were. He is now wanted by the United States for participating in terrorism with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. and termed by the State Department a 'Specially Designated Global Terrorist'.
Pakistani Pashtuns living along the Durand Line, which (when it was drawn up in 1893 by the British to mark the border between Afghanistan and what was then British India) had split the tribes, have always felt the repercussions of the tumultuous events in Afghanistan. About 100,000 people a month cross to and fro, the border meaningless to them. People in the tribal areas therefore felt it their duty both as Muslims and Pashtuns to join their brethren in the fight against the communist infidels. There was a flood of weapons into north-west Pakistan. Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of what was then the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), described the Pashtun in the tribal areas as natural warriors with every man armed. Now the tribes had access to more sophisticated weapons. As arms went one way, heroin flowed the other. On their journey from the port of Karachi to Afghanistan, many of the weapons dispatched by the CIA disappeared into the local markets. Karachi ended up becoming one of the most violent cities in the world while Kalashnikov culture hit Pakistan in general. and the tribal areas in particular. The trucks which were used to carry the weapons were then filled with heroin extracted from poppies cultivated in Afghanistan and the Pakistani border area and sent back to Karachi. Pakistan became the world's largest conduit of heroin and the number of heroin addicts in the country rocketed.
By 1982 the Afghan jihad was receiving annual aid of $600 million from the United States and another $600 million from the Gulf states. The Saudis' funding for the Afghan jihad allowed them to promote Wahhabism, the doctrine of the dominant Islamic sect in Saudi Arabia. Over time its puritanical beliefs have influenced the tribal areas' longstanding Pashtun traditions. The growing number of madrassas or religious schools also affected local religious culture. According to a report by the International Crisis Group, between 1982 and 1988 more than 1,000 new madrassas were set up, many by radical Sunni parties - sponsored by various Arab countries - which were involved in the Afghan jihad or were political partners of Zia. Even US aid money was used to promote jihadi culture. Textbooks were published in local languages by the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the United States to help indoctrinate young minds in the madrassas and refugee camps in the ways of 'holy war' and hatred of the Russians. The Pakistan government should never have allowed these outside influences in to establish these groups in the country; Shia-Sunni violence especially can be dated from this point and grew dramatically in Pakistan. This sectarianism did a lot to undermine the position of the jihadi groups at the end of the Soviet occupation. Three million Afghan refugees flooded into Pakistan, a country still ill-equipped to look after even its own people. Local living standards dropped as these huge communities of refugees competed for jobs and resources. Unlike Iran, where they were restricted to refugee camps, in Pakistan the refugees were allowed to move anywhere. I have to say though that the way ordinary Pakistani people shouldered the burden of such an influx of people puts to shame European countries for the fuss they make over accepting refugees. The Afghans themselves did their best to retain order in the camps through their powerful tribal structure.
Zia's eleven-year rule was a time of great prosperity but not because of any government policy; Pakistan averaged 6 per cent growth a year in the 1980s as the Afghan war brought dollars both in aid and easy credit. Moreover the remittances from hard-working Pakistanis abroad shot up during this period. It is estimated that between 1975 and 1990 some US$40 billion came into Pakistan. Had this money been invested in health and education rather than in useless consumption and extravagance, the country would not be in its present situation, but under Zia corruption passed manageable proportions. He used the money flooding in for the war to buy off political opponents and to fund new political cronies who would support his rule. Through complete control of information, the graft within the military hierarchy was hidden. But Zia's worst legacy was that in trying to keep Bhutto' s PPP out of power he manufactured alternative political forces, strengthening both extremist groups and the military at the expense of democracy. In doing so he also allowed his own cronies to make money through corruption.
This was the period when Nawaz Sharif, twice prime minister of Pakistan (1991- 93 and then 1997-99, after which he was forced into exile for some years), was literally manufactured as a leader. First the iron foundry his family had started and which was lost to nationalization under Bhutto was returned to his father by Zia, then he was allowed to build his business empire by using his position as Punjab's minister for finance. When he was elected Punjab's chief minister he did the same. Working from the principle that every politician has a price, he dished out state resources to buy politicians and become head of a political party, Pakistan Muslim League, and later the Islamic Democratic Alliance, which had been cobbled together by Zia's lSI. According to an affidavit to the Supreme Court by the head of lSI at the time, General Durrani, Nawaz Sharif (amongst other politicians) received 3.5 million rupees from them.
The general's 1985 non-party elections propelled corruption to heights then unknown in Pakistan. Since candidates were not affiliated to parties, they had to be lured into Zia's King's party through material incentives, like plots of state land, loans from nationalized banks, permits and lucrative government contracts. The polls were a disaster for Pakistan, creating a culture of corruption and sowing the seeds for much trouble to come.
I might have been more focused on my career at the time, but it pained me to watch the steady decline of my country from the 1970s. Spending my summers in the UK playing professional cricket enabled me constantly to compare Pakistan with a developed nation, and it was demoralizing. Whilst in the UK the institutions were stronger than the individual. in Pakistan powerful individuals abused the state infrastructure for their own ends. I know it hurt them to admit it, but often I would hear the elders in my family saying how things had worked better under the British. Rule of law, meritocracy, the bureaucracy - all were more efficient under the British, who on the whole had kept a tight rein on corruption. My parents' generation felt so let down by their ruling elite. They had had such hope and pride in Pakistan at its creation but each year their frustration and disappointment grew. Some of the first generation of Pakistani politicians, like Sherbaz Khan Mazari, the son of a tribal chief from Baluchistan, and M. Asghar Khan, the first head of the Pakistan air force, campaigned for years to keep the flame of Jinnah and Iqbal's dream alive. Both spent time in prison or under house arrest after opposing Zia and Bhutto and both have written about their bitter disappointment in the direction the country took.
Like many others from my background I would complain about the state of the country but would not lift a finger to do anything about it. I was from that privileged class that was not affected by the general deterioration in the country. The schools we went to had an imported syllabus, so if education for the masses stagnated we were not touched by it. We did not have to worry if the hospitals were going downhill because we could always afford to go abroad for treatment. And if there were power breakdowns, we could buy generators. (By 2011, most of Pakistan would go without electricity for twelve hours a day.) If the government departments were corrupt, then it was all the easier for us to bribe them and have anything illegal we wanted done. In any case we were always likely to have the necessary government connections to remove any stumbling blocks. If the general public suffered, well it was bad luck for them. I was even more fortunate than the privileged class, as being a cricket star in a cricket-mad country, all doors were open to me. So I did not have to struggle for anything and life for me could not have been easier.
Although I took pride in my Muslim identity, 'Islamization' in Pakistan did not bring me closer to my religion. In fact it had the opposite effect. By nature I always hated being forced to do anything so Zia' s imposition ofIslamic injunctions upon us just made me want to rebel. When I saw Islam being used for political purposes it only deepened my disillusionment. For someone like me who did not have much understanding about Islam, whenever the country's corrupt leadership professed to be devout Muslims, I felt it was Islam that was at fault, rather than the leadership. You see something similar happening nowadays where hardliners believe that only a radical form of Islam will save the country, arguing wrongly that we need to change the way religion is practised, rather than the way our country is run. Moreover, in the late 1970s and 1980s the government-controlled television channel constantly had so-called religious scholars talking about Islam. Most young people would simply switch it off. But it was the hypocrisy that put most of the educated youth off Islam. People expected an Islamic state to have high moral standards.
Events in Afghanistan and Iran dampened any hopes for an Islamic solution for Muslim countries still finding their way in the post-colonial world. In Afghanistan, infighting between the warlords amidst the mayhem left in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 came as a bitter disappointment. The Afghan jihad leaders, glorified as religious warriors, now behaved like criminals - resorting to extortion and murder in their battle for personal power. So many had died, so many ordinary foot soldiers had made great sacrifices, but their leaders betrayed them. The Taliban, which as a group first rallied in order to rid the people of the chaotic tyranny of the warlords, initially gave a semblance of rule of law to the war-ravaged country. But with their unenlightened version of Islam, their inability to understand the essence of the religion, combined with aspects of the harsh rural Pashtun culture, they began to look increasingly oppressive. They refused to tolerate any other viewpoints. Somebody could be declared un-Islamic and punished for something as trivial as not having a beard. Meanwhile, the sorry descent of the Pakistani jihadi groups after the end of the war in Afghanistan into sectarianism and religious bigotry also took the shine off the religious idealism of the late 1970s and early 1980s. During the Soviet-Afghan war, both the Saudis and the Iranians had supported sectarian militant groups in Pakistan. In its wake these groups turned on each other, unleashing Sunni versus Shia violence. For most people this was completely against Islam, which preaches tolerance towards other creeds and faiths. Even Iran, which had aroused such expectations in the Muslim world, disillusioned those looking to Tehran for a lead on democracy Muslim-style. In particular, people were nervous about the power of Iran's Guardian Council of ruling religious leaders - which had the power of veto over democratic decisions. Again, this was completely contrary to the democratic message inherent in the Prophet's (PBUH) teachings.
Democratic principles were an inherent part of Islamic society during the golden age of Islam, from the passing of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and under the first four caliphs. But after the fourth caliph - Hazrat Ali, the fourth successor to Muhammad's (PBUH) leadership, who ruled over his vast empire, from Egypt in the west to the Iranian highlands in the east - democracy disappeared from the Muslim world. Hereditary kingship replaced the budding democracy of the Medina State and only in the twentieth century did it make a reappearance in the Muslim world. (In the eighteenth century, Shah Waliullah attributed the decline of the Mughal empire in particular and Muslims in general to the institution of monarchy, which, according to him, was degenerative and bound to decay.) Today in the majority of the Islamic world there are sham democracies which have not given freedom to the people, hence the urgency and anger of the revolutionary movements spreading across the Middle East in early 2011. An Islamic state has to be a democracy and a meritocracy. In an ideal Islamic society there should be no hurdles in the way of a man achieving his God-given potential. Islamic legal discourse covers both spiritual matters and the rights of an individual in everyday life. On the one hand it deals with prayer. worship. fasting and pilgrimage. On the other. it protects the most basic human needs and rights expected under civil law in the West - the rights to life. religion. family. freedom of thought and wealth. An Islamic state also guards against the executive accumulating too much power by emphasizing that even a ruler is not above the law. Of the first four great caliphs after Muhammad (PBUH). two ended up in front of a judge in a court of law. Hazrat Ali himself lost a case against a Jewish citizen because the judge refused to accept the testimony of Hazrat Ali's son. In Islam. since all sovereignty belongs to Allah both the executive and the people have to stay within the limits of His Laws. The founding fathers of the American constitution also strove to do the same by making the constitution supreme. This is why when Jinnah was asked in 1947 about the constitution of Pakistan. he said its basis would be the Quran.
Justice. compassion. welfare and equality. along with democracy. are at the heart of Islam. yet we saw non-Islamic Western states having greater ethical and moral norms. When I arrived in the UK in the 1970s it was the first time I had seen a proper welfare state. Coming from Ayub Khan's Pakistan. I was amazed by the level of social security. I felt like the Islamic scholar Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905). who said on his return from a trip to Europe to his home in Egypt: 'I saw no Muslims in Europe but I saw a lot of Islam.' and of his homeland. 'There are a lot of Muslims here but no Islam.' This quotation is perhaps even more relevant today. as the spirit of sharia (Islamic law) is more visible in Western countries than in the Muslim world. Until I started educating myself about it. like the majority of Western-educated people in Pakistan I too believed sharia to be some medieval set of laws irrelevant to our times. It conjured up images of fanaticism. women in veils. terrorism. intolerance and the abuse of human rights. Part of this stems from the prejudice in the Western media about Islam. a prejudice that dates back to the Crusades. Unfortunately it must also be blamed on the extremely unenlightened interpretation of Islam by certain Muslim regimes and groups.
In theory. the Islamic state should be a welfare state. That is why I find it strange that in Pakistan people who stand up for Islamic values are called rightist. Islamic values actually have more in common with leftist ideologies. in terms of social equality and welfare. Hazrat Umar. the second caliph of Islam. who ruled from 634 until his death in 644. set up the first true welfare state in the history of mankind. even introducing pensions. Widows. the handicapped. orphans and the unemployed were registered and paid from the state treasury. Moreover. the Quranic injunction of zakat. which exhorts Muslims to give 2.5 per cent of their wealth to the poor and to charity. meant that it was compulsory for citizens of an Islamic state to look after the vulnerable. The idea of setting up waqf (welfare trusts) that ran orphanages. hospitals. madrassas and sirais (free accommodation for travellers) long preceded the concept of trusts in Europe. Yet today Europe has the best social security system. particularly in the Scandinavian countries. and even the United States spends billions of dollars a year on the welfare of its people. Sadly the vast majority of Muslim countries have no welfare system at all. The poor in Pakistan have no safety net other than their own families or tribes. They cannot afford education. health or justice. According to the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 54 per cent of Pakistanis face 'multi-dimensional deprivation'. meaning they lack access to proper education and health facilities and a decent standard of living. Almost two-thirds of the country lives on less than US$2 a day and about 40 per cent of Pakistani children suffer from chronic malnutrition. How can Pakistan be called an Islamic society?
Returning in the winter to Pakistan after playing cricket in England through the summer. I watched the changes in my country with the nagging anxiety of someone who saw it deteriorating each time I came home. Yet I never thought of leaving. I could never imagine another home but Pakistan. Nor did it even enter my mind at this stage to enter politics. In fact I could not think of anything worse. By the early 1980s, like most of the privileged class, I was coming to the conclusion that, since Pakistan's problems were so many and so insolvable, the best thing to do was to just look after myself. Besides, what could politics possibly give me? I had the life that many young people, in Pakistan and elsewhere, dreamt about - I was a rich and glamorous cricket star, jet setting all over the world. Politics was considered a dirty business for those who could not do anything else. Most of the students from my school who went into politics were hopeless at both academic subjects and sports. Usually they belonged to feudal families with political ties. No one thought of politicians as selfless people who wanted to make Pakistan a better place to live in. Neither did I take much interest in social work or charity. Sure, I attended fundraising dinners every now and then, but hardly ever because I was touched by the cause of a particular charity; more because of the social occasion. I hardly ever gave zakat, feeling I had done my duty to society once I had paid my taxes.
Despite this, it was around this time I began to contemplate that there could be a God. It had nothing to do with Pakistan's 'Islamization' but it something to do with cricket. By 1982 I was close to my peak as a cricketer; I had been playing all year round for almost seven years. During this time I began to observe a phenomenon that players called luck. There were times when I would be in great form yet would not have much success, whereas at other times I would be feeling lousy and yet do well. I also found that in closely fought contests there was usually one point that would tilt the contest in favour of one team. Sometimes this would have nothing to do with playing ability. For instance, many times during my cricketing career an umpiring mistake or bias had cost one team the match - even the series. There were other times when a contest was being won by a team and some non cricketing phenomenon like rain would tilt the game in the other team's favour. The toss of a coin also sometimes made the difference between winning and losing. And a peculiar phenomenon which only pace bowlers would appreciate is that sometimes a ball just does not do anything, no matter how helpful the conditions, while at other times a ball will swing in unhelpful conditions. This was because of the way it was stitched together. Then of course a ball could become soft or out of shape and would not respond to the most skilful bowler, again influencing the outcome of the match. On several occasions I would also observe that a batsman would play as if he had a charmed life and was destined to score runs on that particular occasion. He would make mistakes, take unnecessary risks, invite catches, look as if he was about to be got out any second, but end up making runs and being successful. I began to realize that in sports no matter how good I was or how hard I tried, success was never guaranteed. It is important to stress, however, that players who had ability, guts, diligence and determination were consistently successful. but there seemed to be a zone beyond which players were helpless, and it was called luck. Over the years I began to ask myself the question - could what we call luck actually be the will of God?
The other thing that made me feel there could be a God was the vulnerability every sportsman feels regarding injuries. A sportsman can train for months to prepare himself for a big event, yet a slight muscle tear can result in all the hard work going down the drain. As a fast bowler I had to be in perfect muscle condition before a match. Several times I played with half injuries, not sure whether they would worsen during the match or gradually improve. This again was an area out of my control. In 1982 I was at my absolute peak as a fast bowler in terms of physical strength, experience and skill and was poised to go for the world record for the highest number of test wickets. I was so fit and strong that I felt nothing could stop me. This was a point in my life when I used to wonder how people could get old. I just could not imagine that I could ever lose my fitness and strength to age. I felt invincible. In one year I had got over ninety testwickets in just thirteen tests - almost a world record. I had got there through sheer passion and hard work and never relied on anyone but myself. If I had injuries. rarely would I go to a physiotherapist. relying instead on exercise to help me recover. The Pakistan cricket team was rapidly becoming a force in international cricket. We had just thrashed Australia and India comprehensively. Just at that point I got a stress fracture in my shinbone and could not bowl for the next two and a half years. During this time the majority of the doctors I saw felt that I would never bowl again.
My whole world came crashing down. Only an athlete can understand the shock of a potentially career-ending injury. It was the most devastating thing that had happened to me in my life so far. I also lost the confidence acquired through my success in cricket. Success always creates jealousies in certain quarters and all this came out now. There was a spate of nasty articles against me. A couple of players who would not have dared to cross me when I was fit took the opportunity to put the knife in. feeling that I was finished and it was safe to vent their animosity. I used to deal with such people by performing on the field and shutting them up. Now I felt defenceless and had no clue how to deal with the situation. I became a recluse and in my mind made it into a huge crisis. But with hindsight it was a storm in a teacup. Much later I read a book by the eminent cricket writer and historian David Frith about how many cricketers had committed suicide once they could no longer play cricket. Whilst I was never in danger of that. I understood their torment; not knowing whether I would bowl again made me feel extremely unsure and insecure about my future.
In such a state of mind I saw an astrologer and a couple of clairvoyants. Until then I had never believed anyone who claimed to be able to tell the future and frankly I had never needed to. I had so much self-belief that I felt I could achieve anything through my own talent and hard work. I was never one of those sportsmen with trivial superstitions about objects or habits that would bring me luck in a match. My experience with both the astrologer and the clairvoyants was highly unsatisfactory; most of what they said was wrong. I vowed that I would not bother with them again. In my state of uncertainty and vulnerability. despite all my doubts. I would turn to God. especially when. on the long and painful road to recovery. I would start feeling twinges in my shinbone. Twice I had bowled too soon without waiting for the bone to heal properly and both times the crack reappeared. The third time I was careful but whenever I felt pain I was never sure whether I would make it or not.
Death, and Pakistan's Spiritual Life, 1987-1989
PAKISTAN CAME INTO existence as a country because of Islam. and the Islamic beliefs of its founders and citizens. Through circumstances I came to understand Islam better than I had done in my youth. which led me to understand Pakistan. to appreciate its history and the course it was taking. As I learned more about Islam. and about being a Muslim. it became clear to me that I was on a path. one that would lead me to greater engagement with the political life of my country. A spiritual person takes on responsibility for society. whereas a materialist only takes responsibility for himself.
In Pakistan I often came across people who had some sort of spiritual experience or were deeply religious. This was especially true of the elders in our family. My mother started to become more spiritual when I was about ten years old. She and her sister met a female Sufi from Sahiwal. a district south of Lahore. and used to travel to visit her quite regularly. Spiritual guides. or pirs. are quite common in Pakistan. Millions of people. particularly in rural areas of the country. follow them. consulting them on everything from religious matters to sickness and family problems. My mother always tried to encourage me to follow my religion. but it was hard for her to relate to me in the way that I can relate to my children. as she had no way of really comprehending the impact of the competing cultural forces in my life. With my sons I can understand what it means to grow up a Muslim in today's Western society. Meanwhile. my father was also religious. but in a different way. While he had immense respect for the great Sufi saints of the subcontinent. he believed in a direct relationship with God. and didn't feel he needed a spiritual intermediary or a guide as my mother and her sister did.
I had my first spiritual experience when I was nearly fourteen and already quite sceptical about religion and God. My mother was so excited because her spiritual guide. Pir Gi. came to visit us in Lahore for the first and last time. She introduced me to Pir Gi. hoping she would pray for me and offer me guidance. The woman was sitting on the floor with three or four of her disciples. her head covered by a chador. She never looked up at me and I never saw her face. She did not say anything for a few minutes and then suddenly said I had not finished the Quran. I was utterly shocked. Only the maulvi who came to teach me the Quran knew that I had not finished it. My Quran lessons used to be after school and the last thing I wanted to do at the time was to read the Quran. All I wanted to do was to go and play with my cousins in Zaman Park. After a year. the poor maulvi accepted that I was a hopeless case. and one day we both schemed to tell my parents that I had finally finished the Quran. My mother looked at me and immediately knew from my shocked face that her spiritual guide was spot on. Pir Gi told my mother not to worry. that I was a decent soul and would turn out all right. I saw the relief pass across my mother's face. Pir Gi went on to say that I would be very famous and make my mother a household name. When my mother died twenty-one years later of cancer. I built a hospital in her name and today the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital (SKMH) is renowned across Pakistan.
The sense of achievement I was to feel when this hospital opened was far greater than anything I had achieved in cricket. It gave me a surge of pure happiness. The overhaul of my lifestyle from that of a sports star to a humanitarian worker and politician initially met with some scepticism. But as I began my spiritual journey I
started to discover happiness comes from all those things that are considered to be boring by the mass media and the culture of self-indulgence it promotes: giving charity, helping others, family life and achieving selfless goals. My mother's long and painful death in 1985 was the catalyst for this change in me, a turning point in my life, forcing me to face up to my utter helplessness as I tried to ease her suffering.
I first heard the news of my mother's cancer when my sister Aleema called me in the summer of 1984. What had been initially diagnosed in Pakistan as a stomach infection had turned out to be cancer of the colon. I was in England at the time recovering from the stress fracture in my shinbone. I brought my mother to the UK for treatment but by the time we took her back home in September the cancer had spread to her liver. Her last six weeks were very painful and even today I have to block from my mind the memories of this time. Out of sheer desperation and helplessness I would beg the Almighty for help. All my family prayed for her too. So vulnerable was I that I even brought home a faith healer, who turned out to be a complete quack - there was, I soon realized, a whole industry existing in Pakistan of quacks, faith healers and fake spiritualists who prey on vulnerable people.
For a few months after my mother's death I completely removed from my mind the idea of God. However, my internal debate about whether He existed or not later resumed. I had become embittered towards God. If he did exist, how could he have put my mother through so much pain? She was very religious and had been such a selfless mother. The experience of my mother's death coupled with my stress fracture had made me realize how vulnerable I was. The complete faith I had had in my own strength and capabilities was no longer there. It was almost as if someone had put me in my place by making me aware of my many limitations. I again started saying my prayers every morning. This was really like an insurance policy - a sort of safety net in case God really did exist. It is possible that many Muslims suffer from this dilemma. They pray not because they know that there is a God, but because they cannot be certain that there is no God. By this point, my leg had healed and I threw myself back into cricket with all my stored-up enthusiasm. Soon I started having the same degree of success as when I had left off. In fact the long, hard road back to fitness had toughened me up mentally and what I had lost physically during the two and a half years I had been out as a bowler because of my injury I now made up for with much greater mental strength. Just as the body gets stronger by exercise, so does the mind when it encounters resistance.
By this time I had come to the realization that the hedonistic lifestyle that had seemed so appealing from the outside was a mirage. The hurt I caused and the feeling of emptiness I experienced in transitory relationships far outweighed the moments of pleasure. Most of the jet set I knew and socialized with in the 1980s could not face a party unless they had enough alcohol or drugs in their system. It was a world completely cut off from the rest of humanity. I also began to question the things I had always assumed were great fun. The people I was hanging out with had been conditioned by Hollywood-led trends and peer pressure to believe nightclubs, beach and yachting holidays, expensive restaurants and designer clothes made you happy. But parties and nightclubs began to bore me, as did eating out, which had once seemed so much fun. I began to crave home cooking, while years of cricket tours made me hate the sight of hotels. Once I began to change my lifestyle I realized there was a world of difference between happiness and pleasure-seeking. I had mistaken pleasure for happiness but the former does not last long and the activities that give it have diminishing returns. Over the years I had seen so many destroy their lives through hedonism. Alcoholism and drug addiction have ruined the potential of so many pop, film and sports stars. I could easily have slid down that slippery slope, entering that world as I did as an impressionable eighteen-year-old just as the sex, drugs and rock and roll revolution was at its peak. What saved me from disaster was cricket. I had to be fit to perform at the highest level.
and therefore never indulged too deeply in that lifestyle. I also had too much self-respect to allow myself to be humiliated on the cricket field due to over-indulgence elsewhere. My strong family roots, and above all my mother's powerful influence and the fear of humiliating both my immediate and extended family, helped me exercise self-control.
I discovered that it is the environment we grow up in that influences what we enjoy in life and I began to rediscover how much I loved trekking in Pakistan's northern mountains in the summer and partridge shooting in the Salt Range in the winter. Similarly, after all the fancy restaurants I have eaten in, what I really enjoy is the food in the cheap truck drivers' cafes on the intercity highways in Pakistan. This is where the men who drive the famously colourful Pakistani trucks stop to sit on charpoys, bed frames strung with rope, and eat spicy food with mugs of hot, sweet chai. The dishes are simple - daal. mutton or chicken cooked in desi ghee (clarified butter). They are typically all made from local ingredients and freshly cooked, which is why they are so good. Even better is the food I have eaten in the old city of Lahore. No food in the entire Indian subcontinent can match that.
Perhaps it's no surprise, then, given my love for it, that it was while I was in the Pakistani countryside that I met the first of the men who would become my spiritual guides. The first man I met was not exactly a guide but the encounter, and what he told me, so astonished me that it led to my next encounter as I became more open to the ideas these extraordinary men introduced me to. The spiritual journey I embarked on I regard as intrinsic to my history of Pakistan because it was only when I understood fully the spiritual inheritance of the nation, from the principles of Islam expounded by its founders, that I was able to see and comprehend the nature of the history unfolding in front of me, and my place in it.
In 1987, the year I had announced my initial retirement from cricket, I was on a shooting trip with a couple of friends some 100 miles north of Lahore. After the shoot, our host suggested that I meet a spiritual man who lived in a village on the way back home. I saw no point in it but at the others' insistence I agreed to see him. The man, whose name was Baba Chala, lived in a little village just a few miles from the Indian border. He was short with piercing eyes and a happy face. He did not know who I was as nobody in the village had a television and, besides, he did not look like the type of person who would be into cricket. He certainly had not heard about my retirement despite it having been headline news. My host asked him what I should do after cricket. The man looked at me and said I had not left my profession. We all told him that I had retired and had no intention of playing again. The man said, 'It is the will of Allah; you are still in the game.' Next he told me how many sisters I had and what their names were. He then turned to one of my friends, Mohammed Siddique, and told him that he would be double-crossed in a business deal and that he should immediately take his money out of the project, but that things would eventually be resolved. He shocked him further by telling him the actual amount of money involved. We left his place perplexed. What was the trick? On the way back we discussed how he could have known the names of our family members. What we found most difficult to comprehend was how he knew the exact amount of money involved in Siddique's project. Three months later at a dinner given for the cricket team in Islamabad, General Zia asked me to take back my decision to retire for the sake of the country, and again captain Pakistan. Within weeks I was leading the national team on a tour of the West Indies, and my friend's business dealings unfolded as Baba Chala had predicted. How could that man in the village have known, I kept thinking? My mind also went back to my mother's spiritual guide, who had been able to tell that I had not finished the Quran.
Just over a year after that I came across someone who would become the single most powerful spiritual influence on me and completely change my direction in life. A friend in Lahore had invited me for lunch. The only other guest was a frail-looking,
clean-shaven man in his sixties by the name of Mian Bashir. The lines on his face showed that he had seen a lot of suffering. He was a retired junior civil servant who I was told was struggling to make ends meet on his meagre pension. The man sat quietly throughout lunch with a disinterested look on his face. After lunch he politely asked me if I constantly read a certain verse from the Quran. I told him I hadn't even heard of the verse. His face went into a deep frown. He closed his eyes, took on an expression of concentration and then said: 'Sorry, it was your mother who would read that verse for your protection.' With astonishment, I realized that he was absolutely right. When I was a child, before I went to sleep, my mother would repeat a verse from the Quran three times and blow on me. He went on to say that I was protected because of it. Then he told me a couple of incidents about my family, about which no one else could have known and too personal to relate here. I asked him how he acquired this skill. 'It is the will of Allah, at times He shows me something even without my asking for it. Other times I beg him for knowledge about some subject and He refuses me,' he replied. I was really curious. I wanted to know more.
Mian Bashir's father had died when he was barely two years old. His mother really struggled to look after him as the father's share of the family property was fraudulently acquired by his uncles. From the age of about seven Mian Bashir would occasionally see visions, which he could not interpret properly. He met a man at this juncture who told him to read the Quran and spend more time praying and meditating about Allah. 'There are no coincidences in life, that man was meant to guide me towards Allah,' he told me. By the time he was twelve, even the schoolteachers were overawed by his power to see what others could not. He dropped out of school and for the next few years made it his mission to expose professional pirs who, like the commercial Indian gurus, make money off insecure and vulnerable people. He would put out newspaper adverts issuing a challenge to match their spiritual powers with his and expose these frauds who thrive on the poor villagers of Punjab and Sindh.
Over the next year or so, I met Mian Bashir a few times; he fascinated me. Like my mother's guide, he was an unassuming and unprepossessing person, who wore his wisdom lightly. He was extremely humble and would take great pains to tell me that he had no such art of looking into the future or the past. Instead, he said that when he meditated and begged Allah to help him, He would occasionally 'lift the veil', but it was always to help people in distress. 'Nothing,' he said, 'can happen without Allah's will.' Each meeting with him would leave me more convinced about the existence of God. I had been so angry since my mother's death, and here was a man helping to answer many of the questions that had been torturing me. Over a period of two or three years he resolved many of the issues which for me had been an impediment to faith. The difference between the way I learned about Islam from him and the way I had been taught at school or by the maulvis who used to come and teach me the Quran at home, was that he never insisted on any religious rituals. He never told me to pray five times a day or to fast at Ramadan, never insisted I read the Quran. Instead he explained what lay behind the rites. He knew that one cannot force external demonstrations of religiosity as otherwise they are just empty rituals. The internal change must come first. And he let me develop my faith in my own time. Sometimes it took six months for me to truly understand something he had said, but he never hurried me.
What appealed to me about him was that he had no ulterior motive; the only reason he was leading me towards spirituality was for my own good. Rather than making himself indispensable to me, as some fake religious gurus do, he told me that he could only help me so far. I would ask him to pray for me and he would insist that I pray myself, or I would ask his advice and rather than giving it to me he would tell me to pray to God for direction. He never asked for a thing and would say that any religious person who charged people money was a quack. Just as somebody who is blessed with
wealth is morally obliged to share it with others, Mian Bashir believed that somebody with his kind of blessing was obliged to use it to help people.
Mian Bashir, who died in 2005, also had a very poor opinion of those preachers who, by laying so much emphasis on rituals, would completely miss out on the essence of religion. Some, according to him, had made religion into a profession and were there not to guide people but to profit from them. He also felt that they condemned people too quickly and actually made them scared of religion. 'The Quran,' he said, 'was supposed to be a blessing for mankind. It was not to make life more difficult. You cannot drill people to have faith; their hearts and minds have to be penetrated. Faith is the greatest gift of Allah.' He also taught me that any belief system that failed to instil compassion was not real religion or had failed to touch the person internally. So much harm is done in the world by people who treat religions as competing ideologies, yet all religious messages teach humanity, selflessness and justice. People who kill in the name of religion are no different from the materialists who fight in the name of communism, national socialism or capitalism.
So now I had come to the realization that there was a God, but I had to do the reading, to understand the religion that had been sidelined in my Western-style education. Mian Bashir had never finished school. so other than the Quran, he was not in a position to advise me on what to read to deepen my knowledge. My need to explore the religion was spurred on by the furore in 1988 and 1989 over Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Muslims understandably found the book deeply offensive in its satirical portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). It hurt even more because Rushdie was from a Muslim Indian family and must have known the outrage it would cause. You cannot hide behind freedom of speech to humiliate an entire religion and cause so much hurt. Most Muslims felt insulted and responded by refusing to read the book but there was always going to be an extreme reaction from certain quarters. Every society is made up mainly of moderates but has its extremists and the extremist elements of the Islamic world erupted. Only a minuscule proportion of the international Muslim community reacted with violence but all 1.3 billion Muslims were tarnished. Translators of the book were killed or attacked in Japan, Italy and Norway. In Pakistan, several people died when Islamists attacked the American Cultural Center in Islamabad. In Bradford, Muslim immigrants, many of them British Pakistanis, burned copies of the book. British Muslim groups campaigned unsuccessfully to have the book banned in the UK as the country's blasphemy law protected only Christian beliefs. Most famously, Iran's Khomeini declared a fatwa, or religious ruling, condemning Rushdie and the book's publishers to death and calling on Muslims 'to execute them immediately wherever they might be'. An Islamic charity in Tehran put up a bounty for Rushdie's head. Khomeini's fatwa was condemned by a variety of religious scholars, leaders and groups, including the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the intergovernmental body that represents Muslim countries. While blasphemy, according to some interpretations of the Quran, is punishable by death, the fatwa violated various laws in Islamic jurisprudence, which states the need for a fair trial to allow the accused to defend themselves and repent.
The Western public was puzzled by such fury, being absolutely clueless about how much love, respect and reverence Muslims have for the Prophet (PBUH). Our faith depends on his credibility because he is the witness to the Quran. If his credibility is questioned then so is the Quran. Most Muslims live by this book of guidance so therefore take any criticism of it as an attack on their whole way of life. I blame the intelligentsia and leaders of the Muslim world for not making clear to Western countries how hurtful the Satanic Verses affair was. The OIC (Organisation of the Islamic Conference), an association of Muslim states, should have sent a delegation to the European Union and US Congress to explain to them the offence caused by slandering the Prophet (PBUH) . Otherwise, how could the West understand, when in many
Western countries people are allowed to make fun of religious figures? The Jewish leadership has been very effective in making it clear that the Holocaust. which understandably causes them so much pain. cannot be ridiculed. The Muslim elite should have followed their example.
There was nobody to defend the religion. though. and Islam was under attack. with people in the West drawing comparisons with the book-burning of Nazi Germany. I didn't have the depth of knowledge to defend it either. While leading Pakistan on a tour of New Zealand at the time I was constantly being asked about whether Islam was a violent religion. So I started reading books about Islam and found that my mind was more stimulated than it had ever been. I was inspired by the writings of great scholars like Iqbal. the poet-philosopher integral to the founding of Pakistan. and Ali Shariati. an Iranian writer and sociologist. who regarded himself as a disciple of Iqbal. Both believed in Islam's potential for creating ajust society. as had been seen during what is known as the Golden Age of Islam in the first five hundred years after the Prophet's (PBUH) death. The more I read. the better I could understand the Quran. which has many layers of meaning. The more devoted and learned the interpreter. the more the meaning of each passage expands. I was also drawn to the writing of Charles Le Gai Eaton. a British convert. A former diplomat. writer and broadcaster. Eaton was one of the foremost Muslim intellectuals of the West. His writing did much to emphasize Islam's spirituality and undermine the religious arguments of ideologues and extremists. and. together with the example of his own life story. provided a bridge between East and West and demonstrated how Islam could contribute positively to British society. As his obituary in the Guardian put it: 'Refusing to conform to the dictates of any ethnic or cultural model imported from abroad. this impeccable Englishman showed far more effectively than any amount of theory that Islamic faith is fully compatible with British identity ..
Because my roots were Islamic but my education was Western. what appealed to me about Eaton was his experience of and views on Islam as a Westerner. A convert's experience of Islam is purely spiritual. rather than cultural. A lot of scholars in the Islamic world labour under the burden of culture and history and can be too influenced by both. As Eaton himself says in his introduction to his book Islam and the Destiny of Man: 'One who enters the community of Islam by choice rather than by birth sinks roots into the ground of the religion. the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet; but the habits and customs of the Muslim peoples are not his. He lacks their strengths and is immune from their weaknesses; immune. above all. from the psychological "complexes" which are the result of their recent history.' Besides Eaton. another convert who fascinated me was Muhammad Asad. who was born an Austrian Jew under the name Leopold Weiss in 1900. Asad was a scholar and diplomat who was given Pakistani citizenship and advised on the drafting of Pakistan' s first constitution.
My greatest influence at this time though was Iqbal. a philosophical descendant of the Eastern sage Rumi. the renowned mystic and poet-philosopher of thirteenth century Persia. One of the greatest thinkers of modem Islamic history. Iqbal had studied in both East and West and inspired in a generation of Indian Muslims an ardent desire for change. Central to his vision is his philosophy of khudi (ego or 'selfhood·). According to this philosophy. the development of khudi comes about through 'self reliance. self-respect. self-confidence. self-preservation. and self-assertion when such a thing is necessary. in the interests of life and the power to stick to the cause of truth. justice. duty'. Iqbal ardently believed that human beings were the makers of their own destiny and that the key to destiny lay in one' s character. His philosophy was essentially a philosophy of action and it was concerned primarily with motivating human beings to strive to realize their God-given potential to the fullest degree. This he likened to the eagle. the shaheen. an emblem of royalty which denoted a kind of heroic idealism based
on daring. pride and honour. It is the king of the birds precisely because it disdains any form of safety or ease. He reminds the younger generation:
Tu shaheen hay. parwaaz hay kaam tayra
Teray saaminain aasmaan aur bhi hain
You are a shaheen. your work is to fly
There are other skies in front of you
and:
Naheen tayraa nashayman Qasr-e-Sultani kay gumbad pur
Tu shaheen hay. basayra kur paharon ki chattanoon main
Your abode is not on the dome of the palaces of kings
You are a shaheen. live on the mountain-cliffs
The second major theme of Iqbal's philosophy that appealed to me - child of a post-colonial world as I was - was his strong affirmation of freedom and justice. Throughout his life. Iqbal identified himself with the oppressed people of the world. and urged his fellow Muslims to rebel against all forms of tyranny - be it religious. political. cultural. intellectual. economic or any other. For Iqbal. Islam - whose very name means the submission or surrender of oneself to God - implied that Muslims should not surrender their freedom to anything except God. He believed a large part of the Quran' s teachings were aimed at freeing human beings from the chains that bound them: traditionalism. authoritarianism (religious. political or economic). tribalism. racism. classism. caste and slavery. This concern is reflected in much of Iqbal's writing. He believed passionately in freedom. which he considered to be 'the very breath of vital living'. In his eyes. a slave nation had no future. 'In Servitude. it is reduced to an almost waterless stream. but in Freedom. Life is a boundless ocean.' he wrote. Each country had to chart its own path.
On 1 January 1938. amid the build-up to the Second World War. Iqbal made a passionate condemnation of imperialism in a New Year message broadcast on All-India Radio. It was just a few months before his death.
The tyranny of Imperialism struts abroad. covering its face in the masks of Democracy. Nationalism. Communism. Fascism and heaven knows what else besides. Under these masks. in every corner of the earth. the spirit of freedom and the dignity of man are being trampled underfoot ... The so-called statesmen to whom government and leadership of man were entrusted have proved demons of bloodshed. tyranny and oppression. The rulers whose duty it was to protect and cherish those ideals which go to form a higher humanity. to prevent man's oppression of man and to elevate the moral intellectual level of mankind. have in their hunger for dominion and imperial possession shed the blood of millions and reduced millions to servitude simply in order to pander to the greed and avarice of their own particular groups. After subjugating and establishing their dominion over weaker peoples. they have robbed them of their religions. their morals. of their cultural traditions and their literatures. Then they sowed divisions among them that they should shed one another's blood. and go to sleep under the opiate of serfdom. so that the leech of imperialism might go on sucking their blood without interruption. This message is even more relevant today.
Reading and understanding all this was an exciting time of discovery for me but others were rather perplexed. My sisters and particularly my father were amused as they looked upon me as someone who was totally immune to religion. As for my friends, both in Pakistan and England, they started wondering if I had gone a little crazy. They could not understand what had come over me. I didn't fall out with people over it, but after too many passionate arguments I became frustrated, and decided I could not explain faith to people who believe that if something cannot be explained scientifically, then it cannot exist. Faith is something you feel. you cannot explain it. Many assumed my transformation was a result of the trauma of reaching the end of my long-running career. My friends knew me to be a rational and completely non-superstitious person, so this passionate belief in the unseen was a mystery for them, as was my complete change of lifestyle. One of my closest friends, Yousaf Salahuddin, grandson of the great Iqbal. thought I had become a fundamentalist. Amongst sections of the westernized elite in Pakistan, if you start to talk about religion you are automatically branded a mullah. Years later I was speaking to Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens) and he told me how difficult it was for him when he discovered God. He cut himself off from his past life, stopped singing, dumped his old friends and changed his clothes. It took him a while to come to terms with the change in his thinking and to reconcile it with his environment.
It was hard enough for the people who knew me intimately - for the ones who only knew me as a sports star with a playboy reputation, the reaction was even more extreme. I was accused of being a hypocrite or of suffering from a midlife crisis or a nervous breakdown. I remember an article in an English-language Pakistani newspaper that compared me with another Pakistani cricketer, Fazal Mahmood. He was the pin-up sportsman of his time, and led a glamorous life until his retirement, when he turned to God. I suppose people thought that sometimes a professional sportsman needs to replace one passion in his life with another, and often religion can fill that void. (My internal journey had started before I left cricket.) I too used to think Mahmood had become a bit weird. Now I realized that, like me, he saw through the glamour of the fast life and began to search elsewhere to satisfy his soul.
There is a section of Pakistan's westernized class that is not just secular, but actually anti-Islamic, and they use the figure of the mullah or the fundamentalist to attack Islam. Former Turkish prime minister Necmettin Erbakan talked about a similar attitude amongst the anti-Islamic elite in Turkey. In an interview he once described how they started booing and thumping their desks whenever the Prophet (PBUH) was mentioned in parliament. This part of Pakistani society and its media really went for me, accusing me of being a 'born-again' Muslim. Yet no spiritual transformation happens overnight or comes out of nowhere. It is an inner journey that takes time and is shaped by various events in your life. Neither is it a straightforward journey and there were times when I relapsed or had doubts. The Quran warns the believer that their faith will be tested by crises.
My mother always knew that one of the things I hated most was being forced to do something. The more somebody tried to make me a better Muslim through fear or pressure, the more I would resist. The Quran specifically states: 'There is no coercion in religion.' You can't force somebody to have faith because it is ultimately a battle for the heart and mind. So if I became a practising Muslim, it was because it was a decision I came to by myself, after much thought and reflection. I believe that people only really change when their belief system changes. I don't believe that people change because they ever have enough of a pleasure-seeking life. People said that having satiated myself with the life of fun, I had now turned religious. I disagree. In my experience people never have enough of a fun life, they just get more and more debauched in search of pleasure. Besides, these accusations implied that humans cannot evolve and reform. It is only the strengthening of the will through faith that enables a person to conduct the
struggle against earthly desires; what the Prophet (PBUH) called the greater jihad. This struggle continues all one' s life. This is one of the mistakes atheists make; they think that a religious person should be immune to temptation. that the moment he claims to have faith he should transform into an angel. but actually the battle has only just begun. It is the beginning of the battle for the soul. When a Muslim prays five times a day he is making a constant plea to God to help him stick to the right path. For saint or sinner. the prayer is the same call. five times a day. day after day. year after year. for ongoing guidance. 'Guide us the straight way - the way of those upon whom Thou has bestowed Thy blessings. not of those who have been condemned (by Thee) . nor of those who go astray' (Quran 1: 6). It is a constant reformation of one' s character.
I have rarely seen people be changed by seeing psychiatrists. According to Charles Le Gai Eaton. 'Psychiatry is the study of the soul by those people who have no understanding of the soul.' Most drug addicts and alcoholics struggle to control their habits despite repeated visits to rehab clinics. My friend Prince Jagat Singh of Jaipur died in his forties after struggling with alcoholism and going in and out of such expensive facilities. His problem was that he had a directionless and meaningless life and a dissatisfied soul. No rehab clinic is going to help with that. But I have met a lot of people who have changed completely when their souls have been touched by faith. I benefited hugely from the direction of Mian Bashir during this journey of mine. Faith without direction and especially wisdom can produce fanatics. self-righteous bores. even ascetics. Guidance from a proper scholar is most important. hence the tremendous respect given to scholars in Islam. Taimur. or Tamburlaine. the Turco-Mongol conqueror who was one of the greatest butchers in the history of mankind. would ensure that all the scholars were protected before massacring a city's population. Throughout Muslim history scholars could travel to any part of the Islamic world and be received with great respect wherever they went.
Mian Bashir used to laugh at me and say: 'Think how long it took you to believe. You want others to understand you in a few minutes.' He would urge me to recall these words from the Quran: 'Say: I worship not that which you worship. Nor will you worship that which I worship. Unto you your religion and unto me my religion' (Quran
109: 1-6). He explained to me that the basic requirements of the Quran are that a human believes in One God. the day of Judgement. the hereafter. and does good deeds to help others. Several times the Quran refers to Muslims as 'those who believe and do good deeds'. Following religious rituals without doing good deeds makes them meaningless. Inspired by this idea. after my final retirement from cricket I began to work on building the hospital in my mother's name in earnest. However. my way of life was still not exactly Islamic. Mian Bashir. despite being well aware of this. never told me to change my ways. Not once did he give me a sermon about praying. reading the Quran or living a pious life. All he would say was that nothing would please Allah more than the hospital I was building for the poor. When he used to see me worrying about the project's many obstacles. he would reassure me by saying Allah would solve my problems and that He always rewarded good intentions backed by effort. He also reassured me when every now and then my faith wavered. 'Even the Prophet had doubts in the beginning. It was his wife Khadija who assured him that his meeting with the angel Gabriel was real and that he was not going mad.' he told me.
Mian Bashir may have had an ability to see into the future. but it was his wisdom and absolute belief in the existence of God that had a real impact on me. He also helped in removing one of the biggest impediments to my having faith in God. I simply could not picture Him. As a child I would imagine a grand old man with a huge white beard. As I grew older it became much harder to believe that anyone could be so powerful as to create the entire universe and control everything that happened with His will. Mian Bashir simply quoted the Quran: 'Far Exalted is He above all that you attribute to Him'.
and told me that the human mind is not capable of comprehending Allah. so it was futile to try to picture Him; instead one should try to understand Him through the ninety-nine names given to him in the Quran describing His qualities. He told me that it was also impossible to imagine the angels. Hell or Heaven.
I also discussed with Mian Bashir an issue that had bothered me for a long time; it was about the immoral believer and the moral atheist. I had met so many moral and principled people in the West who did not believe in God - and in Pakistan there was no dearth of believers who prayed five times a day and yet indulged in every immoral activity. His answer was that when prayers become a mechanical ritual and fail to touch the soul. a man can struggle to resist his material and animal desires. A lot of people who are religious are not actually convinced that there is a God. As for those who do not believe in God and yet are moral - he felt that morals are engrained into a person by their parents. school or even society. but that ultimately all morality originates from religion. According to him there is no such thing as moral atheism. Once people are cut off from religious values a society's morals will eventually degenerate.
I asked Mian Bashir how he could tell which verse of the Quran my mother would read to me when I was a child. He stressed over and over again that he could only see what Allah allowed him to see. He told me there were times he would meditate and beg Allah for some knowledge to guide someone but it would be denied to him. When I asked him about how he acquired these powers. he simply said: 'Through devotion to Allah.' He would go on to explain that since He has all knowledge. when a man gets close to him. He allows him to see what others cannot (Quran 3: 179 and 72: 26-27). He said not everyone can acquire this knowledge though. Some can try as hard as they can and still not get anywhere. Others. such as God's Prophets. can be shown this knowledge without much effort. For ordinary mortals this knowledge can be acquired through isolation and ascetic discipline. Reading the biography of the twelfth-century Andalusian mystic Muhammad Ibn Arabi helped me understand Mian Bashir's gift better. Ibn Arabi referred to those 'that see with two eyes'. He believed that after a process of spiritual discipline somebody could reach a state during meditation in which they received direct knowledge from Allah.
I also started to read about Sufism. and discovered there was a whole world of spirituality about which I was completely clueless. Sufism is too big a subject to delve into in this book. but these beautiful lines from the mystic poet Rumi reflect what he calls the inner journey of man. and the ascent of the human soul. People who know about mysticism will understand about the journey of the soul towards God.
Low in the earth
I lived in realms of ore and stone;
And then I smiled in many-tinted flowers;
Then roving with the wild and wondering hours.
O'er earth and air and ocean' s zone.
In a new birth.
I dived and flew.
And crept and ran.
And all the secrets of my essence drew Within a form that brought them all to view - And 10. a Man!
And then my goal.
Beyond the clouds. beyond the sky.
In realms where none may change or die -
In angel form; and then away
Beyond the bounds of night and day.
And Life and Death, unseen or seen,
Where all that is hath ever been,
As One and Whole.
Mian Bashir taught me to deal with aspects of Sufism that I couldn't understand by accepting that we are not all-knowing, that we need to have humility. The arrogance that we are meant to know everything only demonstrates the superficiality of our knowledge. Throughout the history of mankind, people have claimed absolute truths - things later proved to be wrong. There is a dimension that is beyond science, logic and modern education, and we should not assume that what cannot be proved does not exist. The more knowledge you have the more you should realize how little you know. I find that people who are deeply knowledgeable, like Mian Bashir, are deeply humble. For me the internal conflict was over from this point onwards. Now there was just this burning desire to understand God. I asked Mian Bashir where I should start. 'Read the Quran,' he said. 'Why did you not ask me to do so before?' I asked. 'You were not ready,' came the reply. 'The Quran only makes sense to those who are searching for the Truth; not those cynics who read it to disprove it.' For someone who believes in reason and logic it is difficult to blindly believe that the Quran is the word of God. It was simultaneously reading the Quran and the fascinating life of the Prophet (PBUH) that convinced me about its divine origin.
Whenever I did not understand anything in the Quran I would ask for Mian Bashir's guidance. He would explain complex issues in very simple terms. Over a period of time he answered most of the questions that had been bothering me about the existence of God. One of these was why, if there is a God, was there so much suffering in the world? The answer came, when you have faith there is a hereafter which is eternal; God is not here to save us from difficulties but to give us the strength to overcome them. (Years later, my son Sulaiman, when aged about twelve, asked me the same question.) This life is just a test for that hereafter. Other questions that I had were answered by reading the Quran. The book that had seemed so difficult to get interested in now offered jewels of wisdom on every page. Having said this, I admit in all humility that I do not have answers to all the questions and I would like to think that, as the Prophet (PBUH) stated, I willkeep learning from the cradle to the grave.
Neither do I claim to be an Islamic scholar, but I would like to use the example of my spiritual journey to put right some of the myths and misconceptions about Islam in the West. A great religion has been maligned thanks not just to ignorance in the Western world, but also ignorance amongst Muslims about Islam's true essence. There is so much debate about moderate and radical Islam but there is only one Islam. People can be moderates, radicals or liberals in any human community but all the world's great religions have at their heart a message of compassion. Faith should be about encouraging all that is noble in a human being. It should enhance both the individual and the community, and is not to be used as a political tool by those greedy for power, as it has been in Pakistan and other Muslim countries, or in medieval Europe. I also want to show that terrorism has nothing to do with religion and certainly nothing to do with the true teachings of Islam. How can mindless butchery and killing be attributed to faith? Islam, like many religions, and for that matter political ideologies like socialism or communism, has been misused by humans for personal and political gain.
For a start, as my faith grew my entire outlook on life changed and I began to reform my character. Those who believe that they will be judged by their conduct on this earth in the hereafter will lead their lives differently to those who only believe in the present life. Had this inner transformation not taken place I would have continued to live a pleasure-seeking existence. I had everything I needed and with a few months of cricket-related work like commentary or journalism I could earn enough money to live a
life of complete leisure for the rest of the year. I had always led a self-centred life. I had a handful of friends in Pakistan and England and made no effort to meet new people and enlarge the circle of people I mixed with. Being shy I found it difficult to open up with those I did not know very well. My bachelor life suited me well as not only did it give me a self-contained way of life without any responsibilities but it also fitted in well with my hedonistic philosophy. I had no desire to have children as they did not fit in with the way I wanted to live. Most of my married friends had struggled with their marriages. not spent enough time with their children and had ended up going through really ugly divorces. My future plans had always been based around how I could maximize this existence: winter months to be spent in Pakistan with family and friends and partridge shooting; the months of June and July in London for the hectic peak of the social season. as well as Lord's test matches and Wimbledon. Then in August I would be back in Pakistan for travelling in the Karakoram. However. as my faith grew stronger I began to feel that I had a responsibility to the society I was living in. I found that there were greater goals in life than material and sensual pleasures. I also started to become aware of the fact that the Almighty had been extremely kind to me. I used to always think of all those things that I did not have. but now I realized I had been blessed with so much and needed to give something back.
I was heavily influenced by the Quranic injunction 'Keep the money you need and give the rest away.' It took me quite a long time to understand this. yet within it lies the key to human contentment. Most people cannot distinguish between wants and needs because wants can be limitless. I would see cricketers I had played with - some of whom came from very humble backgrounds - striving to make more and more money even after they left the sport. I realized that it was out of insecurity. For a sportsman in particular there is usually only a limited time in which one can make a lot of money. These people were caught in a never-ending race where no amount of money was ever going to be enough. It is the same with Pakistan' s ruling elite. Some of our politicians are dollar billionaires yet there is still no end to their greed. What I realized whilst raising funds for the hospital was that the unhappiest people are those whose goals are entirely material. The people who had donated the most were also the ones who were spiritual and seemed most content. In the same vein. the greatest scenes of happiness and contentment I had ever seen were in the villages and homes of rural communities of Pakistan. I have long since believed that the people who are richest are the people who cannot be bought. for any price.
The forefathers of many Pakistanis in Sindh and Punjab were Hindus and before Partition the area that is now Pakistan was a more religiously diverse society. with communities of Muslims. Sikhs. Christians and Hindus living side by side. Now it is about 95-97 per cent Muslim. But there is an especially strong Hindu influence in Sindh. still home to the majority of Pakistan' s Hindus. There is an acceptance of life' s lot as a part of the journey in Hinduism. as part of karma. so in Sindh a peasant typically accepts this. despite being treated almost as a slave by some Sindhi landlords. In parts of Pakistan. especially Sindh. a sense of Hindu fatalism lingers amongst the peasants. Contrary to the impression some Westerners form from the frequent use of the word 'inshallah' (by the will of God) in the Muslim world. fatalism is not part of Islam. You learn to accept what is past. but you retain control of your future. Iqbal ardently believed that human beings were the makers of their own destiny and that the key to destiny lay in one's character. 'Your Khudi elevate to such a height that ere each Judgment. / God Himself asks of His creature. "What is your desire?'" he wrote in one of his best-known couplets: 'Khudi ko kar buland itnaa, kay hur taqdeer say pehlay, / Khuda banday say khud poochay buta tayree raza kya hay?'
In other words. we are masters of our own destiny. The goal of Iqbal's philosophy was not only personal but also social transformation. inspired by the Quranic proclamation. 'Toward God is your limit' (Surah 53: An-Najm: 42).
Like many people I used to torment myself with regrets. obsessing about my mistakes in cricket. racking my brain about what I could have done differently. With faith I learned to let go of what had already happened. something I've been able to do at two different and very painful times in my life. after the death of my mother and then again following my divorce. The Quran states that those who believe in God will be blessed and protected by God: 'Surely those who believe. and those who are Jews. and the Christians. and the Sabians. whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good. they shall have their reward from their Lord. and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve..
And indeed the greatest blessing faith gave me was that it liberated me from my fears: fear of failure. fear of death. fear of losing my livelihood. fear of being humiliated by others. 'Don't fight destiny. because Destiny is God,' said the Prophet (PBUH). This text means the past is only to learn from and not to live in. and that the future is to be looked forward to and not feared. You try your best in the given circumstances; whatever happens after that. you accept as the will of God and come to terms with it.
Because my profession. rather like that of actors and models. depended so much upon my youth I used to worry about both ageing and dying. What was I going to do after cricket? But I came to realize that your livelihood. your health and the time of your death were in God's hands. This was all of great help to me during the last two years of my sports career. It is very difficult to play professional cricket well if you are not playing all the time. I was only participating in international cricket by that time to help raise funds for the hospital. So it was hard to keep my skills honed and I was past my prime. And yet I had more acknowledgement and respect in the last two years of my career than before. I only managed to overcome injury and play in the 1992 World Cup because I had lost my fear of failure and leaving cricket in humiliation. In the past I would never have risked playing in such a high-profile tournament so injured and so out of form. As the Quran says. 'If anyone puts his trust in Allah. sufficient is He for him.' Within me grew the innate confidence of knowing that respect and humiliation are in God's hands. I used to be so sensitive to criticism; I'd fight with people ifI thought they were rude to me. I'd never speak to a journalist again if they wrote something negative about me - a couple of times I'd even slapped one when they were rude to me in public. I masked my shyness with aggression. But my belief in God made me become immune to ridicule. According to the Quran. no human being can humiliate another decent human being. The Greek scholar Socrates. when he was sentenced to death. said more or less the same thing. 'No evil can happen to a good man. neither in life nor after death.'
I was always a risk-taker and faith enhanced that. Fear is the biggest impediment to a human being achieving their potential and dreams. During my cricketing career a lot of talented cricketers never realized their potential because of the fear of failure. Less talented players got far better results simply because of a positive attitude. Some hugely talented batsmen could not do justice to themselves because they were physically scared of getting hit by fast bowlers. In fact. in all aspects of life fearlessness is an essential quality for success. A soldier who is scared of dying is unlikely to win any medals. A businessman who does not take risks is unlikely to succeed. A leader who lacks courage can never command respect and hence never inspire his team. Most crucially. a leader needs courage to take the big decisions. and big decisions always carry big risks. The difference between a good leader and a bad one is that the former takes huge risks while fully grasping the consequences of failure. while the latter takes risks without a proper assessment of the pitfalls. Successful people never make decisions based on fear. Leaders of a country shaping policies out of fear of losing power have always proved to be disastrous. Great leaders always have the ability to resist pressure and make policies according to their vision. rather than fear. As Iqbal said. the punishment for the crime of cowardice is death: ' Taqdeer kay qaazee ka yeh fatwa hay azal say, / Hayjurm-e-za eefee ki sazaa murg-e-mafajaat. ·
Once you learn to overcome your fears. your life transforms because fearlessness breeds idealism. On the other hand. so often have I seen materialism forcing people to be more pragmatic. I am not of course saying that people should not be aware of their limitations. In cricket the first thing I feared was that one could not be successful unless one played within one' s limitations at a given point in time. but one should always strive to overcome them. I have always been something of an idealist. never content to accept my apparent limits. When I was just starting out at international level at cricket. I was so inspired in 1972 by watching a fast bowler for the first time - Dennis Lillee - that my ambition became to emulate him. The senior players and my coach at Worcestershire insisted I had neither the physique nor the bowling action to become a fast bowler and that if I tried to change I could ruin my career. It was idealism that dared me to take risks. Not only did I completely remodel my bowling action to become a fast bowler. but my body also became stronger for me to bowl fast. (No one in international cricket has completely changed their bowling action as I did.) As Iqbal says. 'Gabriel told me at the beginning of time. Do not accept the heart that is enslaved by reason.' Had Sir Edmund Hillary been a slave to reason. he would never have climbed Mount Everest.
Lastly. faith helps you to control your material desires and steels your will. This is part of the inner jihad - the battle between soul and body. I used to consider fasting to be a ritual that was inconvenient and a hindrance to my routine. I would not fast if I was in training as I would be worried about getting dehydrated. After retiring from cricket I decided to try and stick to my daily routine (including exercising) during Ramadan. By the end of the month of fasting I felt I had much more endurance and stamina and felt physically cleansed. Much more significantly it made me realize just how powerful the human will really is. The more you exercise it the stronger it gets. Fasting. if done in the right spirit. can be of immense value. There are a lot of Muslims who destroy Ramadan's value by sleeping during the day and staying up eating all night. During the long. difficult years I was building the cancer hospital. praying became to me more than a meaningless ritual. I found that prayers were the best way to relieve stress - provided one prayed with the knowledge that there was a God and He was listening. Previously the only way I would fight stress was by exercising. I remember so many times coming out of the hospital's board meetings. weighed down by some new crisis we were facing. Since the entire burden of fund collection was on my shoulders I would always assure the senior staff at the hospital not to worry as I did not want to demoralize them. Then I would head straight to the beautiful mosque in our hospital and pray for help. I always felt relaxed afterwards. Soon praying five times a day became a need rather than a duty.
I never took for granted the knowledge I'd gained from being placed on the path by Mian Bahir. as I know from my own experience that it can be argued that just because someone has an extra sense or an ability to predict the future. it doesn' t prove that there is a God. After all. some psychics and clairvoyants can get quite a few things right about the future. But never. in the almost twenty years that I knew Mian Bashir. were one of his prophecies ever wrong. Like most people brought up in the West. my ex-wife Jemima was also quite sceptical about this talent. When she first met him he asked her to write down three things she wanted more than anything in her life. He left her completely awestruck when without even looking at the piece of paper (he could not read English in any case) he told her exactly what her three wishes were.
All the truly great people in history - Jinnah. Gandhi. Mother Teresa. Nelson Mandela - have had a vision and ambition beyond themselves. often achieving more than others not because of more talent but because they had bigger ambitions and selfless dreams. The idea of constantly striving towards ever higher goals struck a chord with me, dovetailing with my own philosophy that I had developed through sport - the more you challenge yourself, the more you discover greater reserves of strength within you. The moment you relax and stop pushing yourself is the moment you start going downhill. I first strove to play cricket for Pakistan, then my goal became to be my country's best all-rounder, then the best fast bowler. From there I wanted to become the best all-rounder and the best fast bowler in the world. When I was made captain the ambition became turning the team into the best in the world. And once the cancer hospital I founded in memory of my mother became a success I set about building two more hospitals, one in Karachi and one in Peshawar. Now my challenge in life is to bring about a socio-economic revolution in Pakistan. I am also building a knowledge city on the pattern of Oxford University in Mianwali, the first private-sector university in the rural areas of Pakistan. After one goal has been achieved, there are always more to conquer. As Iqbal says: 'Other worlds exist beyond the Stars / More tests of love are still to come.'
My ex-wife Jemima used to ask me how long I would keep pursuing politics without succeeding, at what point would I decide it was futile. But I couldn't answer, simply because a dream has no time frame. It does not matter what your education or social background is, you can only fulfil your human potential if you never give up on the pursuit of your dreams. Human contentment is connected to knowing the purpose of one's existence. When one is pursuing one's dreams, even when one is going through outer turbulence, there is always inner peace. During the last decade I went through some of the most painful and difficult phases in my life, but I always slept well, confident within myself that the resistance I was facing was to strengthen me to achieve my goals.
Faith answered two of the most important questions, which had always nagged me. Questions that science could never answer. What is the purpose of existence? What happens to us after we die?
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