Capability and Alertness

where the Israeli airliner, hijacked by Palestinians in 1976, landed. For a few days this story remained on the front page of newspapers; but you all know the price that the Palestinians had to pay for this afterwards. From this one can tell how modern journalism makes a thing, which in real terms is absolutely worthless, appear as if it is of the greatest worth. What we ask of the press is that it should attach importance to real value, not to news value. Attaching importance to real value makes one realistic, and realism is the source of all human virtues. Attaching importance to news value, on the other hand, leads to insincerity, and insincerity is, without doubt, the cause of all human evils. The press can play an important role in the sincere and constructive society that Islam seeks to create. But at present it is proceeding in a direction quite contrary to this aim. Islam seeks to train people to attach importance to realities, and in modern journalism perfection has become to spotlight what is most unreal. While on a foreign trip, I once met a gentleman from Canada. He asked me the meaning of Islam. “Islam means realism,” I replied. In actual fact, Islam is the science of life, and this science is founded on the principle that one should be realist in this world; in every matter one should adopt a realistic attitude which is the secret to every success in life, and lack of realism is the prime cause of all failure. In the present age there are two departments which are particularly important in fashioning the shape of life. These two departments are science and journalism. Science is connected more to the physical world and journalism to the human world; science studies events in the universe, and journalism deals with the events in the world of man. But the strange thing is that these two departments are at severe odds with one another. Science is founded fully on realistic principles; it proceeds in compliance with the reality that there is a world outside us that rests solidly on firm laws. Water, for instance, has a law of its own; so does land, and so does the atmosphere. Ships come into being by virtue of conformance with the laws of water; motor cars result from conformance with the laws of land; aeroplane develop from the conformance with laws of atmosphere. This complete conformance with the outside world is what every triumph of science basically is. But in journalism—or the world of man—the very opposite is the case. One chapter of a book I read on journalism showed the principles