The spirit of sacrifice and the genesis of Rashidabad Model Village, Pakistan

New towns are not born. They are created. Though it is not often a new town's inception is draped in tragedy. Except in Rashidabad's case. Rashidabad is a small settlement in the Tando Allahyar district of Pakistan's southern Sindh province.

Rashidabad's history does not begin with the opening of a hotel or railway station. Instead, Rashidabad's story begins with a tragic death of an air force pilot.

It was in December 1997 that a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) pilot named Flight Lieutenant Rashid Ahmed Khan took off on a routine mission in his Mirage fighter jet.

A short while after take off his aircraft caught fire above a densely populated area. PAF ground authorities ordered the pilot to abandon the plane, bail out and save his life. Flight Lieutenant Rashid disobeyed these direct orders. Instead, he opted to save thousands of lives by maneuvering his aircraft to an unpopulated remote area. In the effort, he sacrificed his own life.

Rashid died in the Sindh desert of Tando Allahyar district between the cities of Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas.

Rashidabad has its own railway station on the Hyderabad - Khokrapar (via Mirpurkhas) branch line. The line sees a weekly train towards Zero Point and onwards to India as well as a couple of daily trains towards Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas. 

Following the death of their only son, Rashid's father – himself a retired PAF officer - galvanized a group of retired Air Force officers and in 1998 created the non-profit Rashid Memorial Welfare Organization (RMWO). The RMWO's objective is “[setting] up model villages throughout the country [Pakistan] by integrating all essential facilities in a well-knit mosaic so as to ensure a positive beneficial outflow to the needy rural folk – all under one roof. Our main thrust is on education, health and vocational training...” Rashidabad is the RMWO's initial pilot project.

The Hunar Foundation operates a vocational training institute in Rashidabad.

It has been twenty years since RMWO's establishment and Rashidabad is a thriving town. It provides not only employment opportunities to nearby local communities but also badly needed essential medical and educational services. Today, Rashidabad houses a hospital, schools, school for the deaf, school for the visually impaired and an eye hospital. More welfare organizations are establishing a presence and in the process of constructing their premises.

Rashidabad has a school for those with hearing disabilities as well as one for persons who are visually impaired. 

Death is an inevitable part of life. Everyone eventually faces death. Normally, one views death as a tragedy - an occasion to be mourned. It does not have to be so. Take Flight Lieutenant Rashid's case. His death allowed hope to enter the lives of thousands of Pakistanis.

This story is not about a tragic death but a happy beginning.

That's me posing for a selfie with students from the SST Public School, Rashidabad! 

Imran is an adventurer, blogger, consultant, guide, photographer, speaker, traveler and a banker in his previous life. At the time of writing, Imran is living in Rashidabad until December 2017 while a volunteer at the SST Public School. He is available on twitter (@grandmoofti); Instagram (@imranahmedsg) and can be contacted at imran.ahmed.sg@gmail.com.

Faith, hope, miracles and the free market

I believe in the free market of ideas. Even if some of these ideas are ludicrous, the ‘magic of the marketplace’ will discredit them over time. Or so I hope.

Nonetheless, often it seems that my faith in humans is misplaced. Rationality is trumped a human being’s desire to believe irrational thoughts, mostly because these thoughts provide hope.

Hope is the foundation for so many positives in so many lives. Hope helps us achieve in ways which cannot be quantified. And how can I begrudge anyone who provides Hope (with a capital ‘H’)?

Sometimes, though, hope plays to the frailty of the human spirit. Hope often makes us believe things which fly in the face of logic.

Sometimes that’s good but other times it’s bad. It’s good to believe we all can achieve our dreams during our lifetime. But how about believing illnesses like diabetes can be cured through prayer?

Hmmm ... I am a little sceptical. Maybe the Scientific Revolution is so much a part of our modern lifestyle that it is difficult to fathom the miracles Faith (with a capital ‘F’) can wrought upon us?

So how does a person who believes in freedom of thought square the circle of allowing free thought but yet controlling harmful thought? Not easily, if at all! Squares, after all, cannot also be circles.

The only Hope (there’s that word again!) lies in education.

The Scientific Method  – teach people to be rational and we won’t be fooled again! Unfortunately, at times even education fails us ... so we are left with other harsher methods such as censorship through a criminal code. There again, someone has to play God and define morality?

So perhaps it is best to let people attempt to cure diabetes through miraculous prayer ... and let them figure out the truth for themselves!

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Imran is a business and management consultant. Through his work at Deodar Advisors and the Deodar Diagnostic, Imran improves profits of businesses operating in Singapore and the region. He can be reached at imran@deodaradvisors.com. 

The ‘God Particle’ and Allah’s students

The world is apparently on the cusp of a significant scientific breakthrough. Scientists in Switzerland have discovered evidence of the 'God Particle,' a breakthrough which might lead to deciphering some of the mysteries surrounding the world's creation.

The road named after Pakistani Nobel Prize physicist Dr. Abdus Salam in CERN, Geneva.

Pakistani Nobel Prize winning physicist, Dr. Abdus Salam, may have played a role in critical early research on the subject but that fact only underscores the pathetic state of learning in the Islamic world today.

Islam's knowledge deficit has its roots in history. Despite the rich tradition of scientific enquiry of earlier Islamic societies, the Islamic world slept through the Scientific Revolution. Mostly, the arrival of steam engines and cotton ginning machines into Muslim territories - from Istanbul, Cairo to Delhi - had to wait until respective colonial masters saw fit to introduce these technologies. Or, as in the case of the Ottoman Turks, the knowledge was bought with borrowed money, many decades later.

Unfortunately, things have changed little in the Islamic world during the last few centuries. The Islamic world still has demons to exorcise.

The conservative religious clergy with its reactionary world view is alive and well. Women in Saudi Arabia cannot drive for a reason. Even with all the oil wealth at its disposal, the Saudi state is not powerful enough to directly challenge such anachronistic religious edicts. Sadly, reactionary religious conservatism of sorts has permeated all corners of the Islamic world. 

However, the situation is not all bad. 'International' secular, scientific knowledge is being soaked up by Islamic societies in a big way. The catch-up process is underway. There are umpteen universities and research institutes established in the post colonial era. Wealthy Islamic states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia are collaborating with global educational centers of excellence to improve research standards.

Surely, there is little, if any, genuine secular knowledge creation in contemporary Muslim societies. Nevertheless, the seeds for a future knowledge revolution are being planted. It is not by chance that a new generation of Arabs wishes to rid itself of authoritarian rulers. The new generation is an educated, worldly wise population seeking to move into modernity, including in governance standards.

Unfortunately, Islam's knowledge revolution is decades away. Debates about hijab, consumption of alcohol or the role of women in an Islamic society are apparently more important than acquisition of knowledge. Consequently, for the next few decades headlines such as 'New God Particle Discovered' are more likely to be followed by 'Historical Timbuktu Shrines Burnt by Muslims Acting in the Name of God.' Articles with sentences such as the following will only be found in the fantasy world of optimistic bloggers.

"Scientists working at the Institute of Particle Research in [insert Islamic city name / country here] held a press conference to highlight the latest advancements in the field of particle physics."

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Imran is a business and management consultant. Through his work at Deodar Advisors and the Deodar Diagnostic, Imran improves profits of businesses operating in Singapore and the region. He can be reached at imran@deodaradvisors.com.