Tall Towers or Education

Tall Towers or Education




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Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal plans to build Kingdom Tower which would be the worlds tallest building, at the cost of $ 1.2 billion. This has reminded me of an event when during 1949 the world Jewry planned to build gigantic place of worship in Jerusalem and in order to accomplish this task they collected $ 1 billion from all over the world, an enormous figure in the late forties. When this huge amount was finally handed over to the Chief Rabbi to start doing the needful, he contended that the spread of education is more exalted a cause than building a Synagogue. Therefore, the Chief priest instead of investing huge amount in the construction of proposed religious monument, decided to establish from this collected amount an educational trust, so that not a single Jew remained uneducated.
As a result, in 1950 the worlds great educational trust was established in Israel and as consequence at present not a single Jew is illiterate. This is the reason that this small community of 15 million people has produced more than 60 Nobel Laureates in the science alone as compared to one by Muslims notwithstanding Muslim world consists of 56 countries with population of more than 1.6 billion. The highest level of learning achieved by the Jews, therefore, has positioned them as one of the most powerful people of the world.
Needless to say the lowest literacy rate in the Muslim world, which is the chief cause of social malice such as poverty, hunger, political uncertainty, and worst of all intolerance, is of their own making as our policymakers have always put education at the lowest of their priorities. Even in the Arab countries where worlds richest people like Prince Al-Waleed live who was ranked 26th richest person in the world and is nicknamed by Time magazine as the Arabian Warrben Buffet, the amount set apart for education and research is amusingly 0.1 per cent of their total income which is even four times less than the African countries who spend 0.51 percent of their income on research.
The Arabs, bestowed with enormous resources are disinclined to invest adequately in the education and wasting vast sums on mere showoff: whereas Israel, their immediate neighbor and anathema, with minuscule population and much less resources has turned out as most powerful country of the region only because of the fact that their priority is human development. The worlds tallest building would not bring any change in the lives of people but it is the investment in education and research which can provide better opportunity to the young generation and can also bring economic revolution in Islamic countries.












ALTAMASH MANZOOR


Karachi, August9








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