I have long wanted to write on this issue. We have a lot of leaders on the East side of the world but despite the huge numbers it has failed to produce quality leaders, that have a vested interest only in what is in the best interest of the nation itself, and in some cases where there were great leaders the system was used against them to refrain them from taking a lead and in some instances you can simply put the blame on the mass ignorance of the citizens of the country.
Where should we start from the, the list is very long, ok, lets begin with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president. My standard of measuring the credibility of a leader lies in the ability of the leader to understand the situation and problems around him and be able to drive the nation to prosperity, where prosperity could be in terms of politics, economy, religion or anything which is the need of the hour. Since Ahmadinejad came to power the only problem he saw was Israel. Not to mention folks, Iran is a country with vast natural resources and huge labor forces, but Ahmadinejad like some of the other leaders since the 1979 has focused on leadership based on hatred. We might think that this is a technique used only by the terrorists, but it is being played very effectively around us, a very good example of it can be found in Pakistan in the form of political religious parties. Lets not underscore the power of hatred over here also, it is a very effective force, but that is another topic, may be some other time. The problem with most of the religious leaders in the Asian subcontinent also remains in the fact that they have never realized the reality around them. If you ever listen to ideology of the religious political or more correctly the ‘Islamic leaders’ the theme ranges anywhere from ‘destruction of Israel’ to ‘the western nations plan to destroy Islam’. Our Islamic leaders have enough vision to sit in Peshawar (Pakistan) and spot the ‘conspiracy’ taking place in the White House but they cannot see the children dying from malnutrition and lack of medical care down the very street they are standing on, they can see the next strategy taking shape in MI5 in London but they cannot see the whole families committing suicide in the next city from absolute poverty, they can see how Israel is planning to attack the Muslim nations but they are blind from the honor killings in the villages. So if you ask them what the problem is they have one answer ‘Islam is under attack’ and if you ask them why is it so, there answer is ‘You are not good enough of a Muslim’ and if you ask them so how do you explain the poverty and illiteracy among the Muslim nations, there answer is ‘It’s the western conspiracy’.
Not only has this attitude kept us from moving ahead but has also put the ordinary citizen under a very difficult choice because he can either keep scum to the calls of these leaders or he can try to follow the tried and proven way of success which the western nations have went through but then he would be becoming a ‘Kafir’.
This is the very reason that despite revolution after revolution and after countless sacrifices of the ordinary people, a good example of which would be the rise of Taliban & the Islamic revolution in Iran, has produced no better results, instead has pushed us deep into the ever widening whirlpool of radicalization, terrorism, hatred, poverty, ignorance and destruction. But despite all this visible signs of failure it has not stopped them from pursuing even greater ‘visions’ like the, reestablishment of the Khilafat.
These are the blind leaders, that claim to see every problem and having a solution to every problem.
