It is the holy month of Ramazan; when Muslims all over the world reflect on issues, pray and renew their relationship with God and fellow human beings. Part of that involves seeing our own world in a more realistic way, without excuses and pretences.
If Muslims and the rest of humanity could seek to come closer to these ideals, not only during the ninth month in the Islamic Lunar Calendar, but also during the other eleven months, the world would become a much better place for all.
In her book, A Letter to Pakistan, Karen Armstrong, the famous religious thinker and teacher, discusses the twelve basic principles or steps of what has been termed a ‘charter for compassion.’ The 100 page book was published by Oxford University Press in Pakistan in 2011. It is a quiet, thought provoking document of value to our actions at home and in the wider globalized world.
The current Israel-Palestine crisis, with the murders of youth which created excuses for counter-actions, would have been entirely different if empathy and compassion with ‘the others’ had been shown. How can the stronger, notably Israel, allow its state system to be used in the ways we have recently seen without citizens demanding more humane policies?
It is easy for me to point a finger. But it is also right to do it.
A few days ago, I had the opportunity to listen to some foreigners talking about what they thought was right and wrong in Pakistan. Sadly, they had little positive things to say. I came to reflect on the discussion afterwards, and I wondered why foreigners, especially middle-aged men and women from the industrialized West, so often feel that they have the right to criticize a host country, after having spent just a small amount of time in it. How much have they tried to learn about the new land, about ‘the others’, and through what eyes have they seen them? Do they feel compassion with the people in the land, or are they just arrogant visitors for a while? Do they think in terms of ‘I, We, The Others,’ placing themselves on a pedestal as if we and our lands are faultless?
When I was a young student in education and development studies, and later a researcher doing several stints of fieldwork in East Africa, 30-40 years ago I discussed the besserwisser attitudes with other local and foreign academics; today, it seems that we don’t question our own attitudes as much. A generation ago, there were technical assistance personnel from the West in Africa. In Tanzania, for example, my home country Norway had 30- 40 experts, plus up to 50 in the Peace Corps, working as secondary school teachers and in other middle-level jobs. In the latter group, there was debate, while there was less of it amongst the experts. As students and researchers, we used to criticize the experts for not analyzing their roles, opinions and behaviour. We were especially critical if the spouses were as opinionated, if not more, than their husbands; we would say that they did not have the adequate tools, knowledge and a milieu around them, to understand the new society.
True, also those who came from the social sciences, like I did, would need a long time and a lot of hard work to be able to understand the new land, its people, institutions, and so on, in order to be able to give a fair analysis of issues in the country. But at least, most of us were humble and realized that we could not become specialists on ‘the others’ overnight.
Some students and researchers dug deeper into the issues. Terje Tvedt, now a professor, wrote a best-selling book entitled Images of the Others, about developing countries in the era of development aid. And he wrote another book, The Norwegian Samaritan, about rituals, self-images and development aid, also with reference to NGOs and missionary organizations- the latter often claiming better knowledge about ‘ordinary people’.
In addition, we discussed how our ‘fieldwork’ should be implemented so that we could learn and understand more, and refrain from being judgmental and draw superficial outsiders’ conclusions. Anthropologists have always underlined the importance of this, but have not always practiced it.
We discussed the way diplomats worked, and we wondered how much they would be able to understand ground realities, since their own networks were mostly at higher, more formal levels. (It would be the topic of at least one other article to consider diplomats’ ability to learn and understand the countries they work in, taking the many limitations into considerations.) Today, one can base much information gathering thorough reading the paper, but in Tanzania, the media was quite poor at the time and foreign reporters were few and far between. Several years later, when I came back to the country as a diplomat myself, I experienced how little we managed to learn, not because of bad will, but simply because of institutional culture and limitations, and the general workload.
In conclusion, when we try to learn about ‘the others’, we must have real interest in doing so. We must, in our hearts and minds, feel empathy and compassion with them. We must not only see things through our own eyes, based on our own opinions and background, without the proper social science tools. True, general knowledge may take us only half way, if our willingness to learn is genuine. But we also need methods and indeed time, to learn and understand. Finally, we must be careful with terminology; in some situations, we all belong to ‘the others’. We must show tolerance and understanding with all, strong or weak, in a diverse and multicultural world. In Pakistan, regardless of religion and faith, I believe we all feel included in the spirit of the holy month of Ramazan. Let us cherish that together.

 The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist with experience in research, diplomacy and development aid.

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