The Mind's Best Fruit

If you read books, admiring authors is a natural corollary. I have been ever grateful to the vast feast of intelligence that is available to all of us who read and change our thinking, enabling us to grow and help others to grow. Nothing quite helps growth than seeing the "big picture" that is possible from the thinking of a first rate mind. Imagine the delight then when you get a chance to meet the authors in the flesh… who are authors of books you have learned a lot from. It almost makes you giddy with a joy that is understandable only to those who know such things.

This note celebrates Prof. Jill Carroll of Houston, Brannon Wheeler of Annapolis and Andrew Hargreaves of Boston.

I had received through Amazon a book titled THE DIALOGUE OF CIVILIZATIONS, a which intrigued me as I have always maintained that it is not the CLASH of civilizations but the LACK of civilizations that has marred the modern world. So when I got the book, I was even more glad to find that an American academic had decided to look at the thought of Fethullah Gülen and connect it to Plato, Confucious, Kant and Mill. Imagine my surprise when I heard that the "professor from Rice University" whom my friend Abdullah Jafari had arranged for me to have breakfast with was the very same author; imagine HER surprise when she saw her book that I had taken with me from Karachi! The morning of Feb 16th was thus a charmed morning.

The conversation with her was very illuminating. She talked about her connections with the Gülen School teachers. How mild mannered well spoken Turks had created a whole network of schools around the world as a duty to Islam; how they were inspired by Gülen's ideas where he taught them of a vital interface between Islam and modern world: service to mankind. I recalled my own brief meeting with one such teacher in Islamabad, who taught at the Pak-Turk School. He invited me to their regular meeting on Thursday, where, he said, "we meet to join hearts, not break hearts". I marveled at the precise phrase: how lovely for people to be this clear about the point of meeting! How greatly did my society need them!

She talked about why she did not choose Ismaili and Shia scholars who also espoused such ideas in her book. "I wanted a Sunni scholar so that I would be able to point out to the largest community in Islam that someone who is a Hanafi (the major school of Law followed in most Muslim countries, including Pakistan) can also say things which are directly promoting the cause of peace, justice and pluralism. The other minority sects, for all their brilliance could not have such an impact." I agreed with her. Just an aside: should her book be translated into Urdu? Yes, but not until some of Fethullah Gülen's own works are translated into Urdu first. There seems to be little awareness about him in the madrasa circles, mainly due to the language barrier: English is not a strong point of the madrasa teachers!

On February 6th I visited Annapolis: the US Naval Academy to meet with Prof. Brannon Wheeler. George had made all the arrangements and I was excited to meet someone who had taught me much about how Islam was taught around the world at the University level through his book TEACHING ISLAM.

My first look at Prof. Brannon Wheeler was that of a young man: I was glad to see him his warmth and disarming candour. (This was a point I noted in all the celebrities I met: they were glad to meet me, humble about their own work and candid about the limitations (if any) about their own work.) Our conversation swiftly moved from book to book: references to the books I had with me were matched with the recent work by the same scholars that I was not aware of… which lead to his work of teaching in the US Navy; which led to a short history of how 9/11 had expanded the department manifold. He was generous with his time and his books. It was pleasing to notice that Bruce Lawrence's THE QURAN: A BIOGRAPHY was on his table with all the markers to show that he was reviewing it… when I mentioned that I had read it already; he commented that I was abreast of recent work quite well. He presented me with his own new book MECCA AND EDEN, which I accepted with thanks and with a heady pleasure of intellectual stimulation and happiness, we parted. Certainly we will keep in touch on email.

But the most powerful of my intellectual interactions was yet to come … in Boston. I did not know this until about three hours before it was to happen: somehow the revised program did not reach me by email and anyway, it was the high point of my trip to that city.

The Lynch School of Education is in Boston College, and Professor Andy Hargreaves teaches there. It is difficult to describe the feeling when we shook hands and made the introductions: I was meeting one of the most influential minds on Teacher Education, someone who had shaped my most radical ideas on change in Pakistan's schools and whose books had literally been the basis of my most important career decisions: to quit the Aga Khan University's Institute if Educational Development.

Let me say just as an aside: I had read his books when I was at Manchester, UK and he was at University of Leeds, in the 1980s. Later I visited University of Toronto, Canada and was again pleased to note that he was working with Michel Fullan, whose books were having the greatest following on those who were dealing with the moral dynamics of schools and teaching. And now here I was in Boston College, meeting him in person! As I narrated these things to him, I got the rarest of compliments: "You know, people in America don't know of my Canadian work. People in Canada didn't know of my British work. And I am now meeting a man from Pakistan who knows of all three!" Wow!!!

We talked about his most recent research; Once again the generosity was notable. He immediately presented me his latest (2009) publication which he'd co-edited with Micheal Fullan CHANGE WARS.

Abbas Husain has an M.A. in English Literature and M.Ed. (Teaching English to speakers of other languages) from Manchester University, U.K. He has received professional training at the Universities of Toronto, Pittsburgh, Louisville and Chicago. He is one of the founder members of SPELT and has published widely in national and international journals. His study: Varieties of Verbosity in Pakistani English, has been published in World Englishes, volume 11 no.1 in March 1992