Choosing the Best Method
Al-Risala (English), July 1991, p. 26
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is named as the default author of the periodical; a piece that carries another writer’s byline is credited to that writer.
Choosing the Best Method
1991 7 July 26 Choosing the Best Method (235) Five billion dollars are spent annually on drinks by the Australians. So writes the Australian journalist, Merveym Hardingh, quoting from a statement made on the subject by the Australian Minister for Health Services. (Reproduced in the Statesman, August 6, 1990, p. 6).
It seems that this massive consumption of alcohol has resulted in a serious increase in road accidents and that ailments which are known to result from heavy drinking have become prevalent. One out of ten Australians suffer from alcohol-related brain damage. Attempts to check or reduce drinking through anti-liquor campaigns and increased taxes on drinks have been a dismal failure.
Certain Australian intellectuals have made a proposal to solve the problem through education. But Mr. Hardinge is sceptical. He says, “Any anti-liquor education programme must inevitably fail, for the simple reason that most of the prospective converts would, be too fuddled to attend class.”
The view expressed here about anti-liquor education holds true for other efforts of this kind. For instances, the many programmes shown on television in Pakistan under the scheme of Islamization were watched only by those who had no need of them, for the people at whom these programmes were actually targetted switched off their TV sets as soon as they were announced.
The truth is that all such reformation in thinking can be more effectively carried out through sustained missionary effort rather than through school education or T.V, programmes.
