The Culture of Lies

There is a famous incident of Imam Bukhari. He came to know that a person had a hadith (saying of Prophet Muhammad PBUH). Imam Bukhari went to meet that person. It turned out he was in a forest. Imam Bukhari reached there. He saw that the man was calling his horse near him by showing grass as bait but actually there was no grass in his hand – it was a “trick”. Imam Bukhari said that traditions cannot be taken from a person who deceives his horse, and returned without meeting that person. Well, this was regarding hadith but our civilization has also promoted ‘Hadith-e-Dil’ (commands of the heart) to the same level of authenticity.

There is the incident of St. Thomas which is not very famous. He was sitting with his friends. As a joke, his friends said look, look there’s a winged horse in the street. Listening to this, St. Thomas turned towards the street but there was nothing. His friends started laughing. They said is there even such a thing as a winged horse? How could you even consider our words as true? St. Thomas said it is easier to believe in the existence of a winged horse than to not trust in the words of friends. Oh no! has this turned into an embrace between civilizations? Look away! Come beloved, let’s cry and wail. But pardon me, our topic today is something else.

Honesty is the foundation of life. Without it, forget love one cannot even hate something. Without trust, the blankets of creativity and knowledge become dry and the entire beauty and charm of life is ruined. Imam Bukhari had the responsibility of recording eternal honesty with complete authenticity on his shoulders which is why the deceiving of the horse felt terrible to him. But now forget horses, we “intentionally” tell lies to humans and still wish to be considered credible. St. Thomas’ religious consciousness had room for wondrous creatures but no room for the possibility that his friends could also speak lies. However, the situation now is no secret.

Lying is not a creation of our times but the systemization of lies is undoubtedly an achievement unique to our times. But what does it mean?

Hitler’s minister Goebbels is still defamed today because he used to say that lies should be reiterated to the extent that they start appearing to be the truth. This was apparently a fundamental aspect of the concept of propaganda. But looking at the world we breathe in today, it can be said that Goebbel was naive and his creation was a kind of “pseudo production” because his philosophy consisted of repetition of ideas. Keep reiterating an opinion until people feel there is no other viewpoint and the one that exists is the truth. Undoubtedly this philosophy still exists and works all over the world.

However, what Goebbel could not even have imagined is that by creating specific circumstances and events, reality itself can be constructed. Goebbel’s philosophy believed in changing the interpretation of reality but now realities themselves are being created and some people are striving to become God, some with announcement and some without, God forbid. After the denial of God and religion in the West, the desire to become God is so intense – to estimate this, read Eric Fromm’s book “Man Shall Be As God” but remember this book is not for children and it also contains a bibliography. But the question is what does manufacturing reality mean?

The conspiracy theorists have gone as far as saying that the first and second world wars were actually created by Jews but admittedly there is still a lack of evidence in this thesis. The Pearl Harbor incident in WW2 itself was America’s creation and it was created so that America could justify using the atomic bomb against Japan. In the US and Europe, there is a rapid increase in the number of books that are raising fundamental questions about 9/11. The situation of the Muslim nation is dualistic in this regard – on one hand it faces the creators of the West and on the other it faces its the monkey’s of the the West present within.

It is said about the Chinese that they had invented paper two thousand years ago but they were aware of the repercussions of information explosion. Eventually paper and printing press were invented and now the matter has progressed from newspapers to television. There is a famous saying “Seeing is believing” – if a person does not believe what he sees with his eyes, then what will he believe? But the nature of the essence of this device is such that it can show both reality and mere Virtual Reality on its screen – just like television dramas it can show television reality. This is why audio visual content is no longer accepted as definite evidence in courts in the US and Europe now. But the world of courts is different from the world of humans. So in the West, artificial reality is readily accepted as actual reality and if this is the state of the people in the West, then what must be the state of people from third world countries who have started becoming enamored by this medium too and who shake their heads saying “Sir, we have seen this thing on TV” and when saying this, their condition is such that as if they themselves have discovered something or revelation has taken hold of them. This is fundamentally not an issue of television but of the capabilities of this device and unfortunately, this tool has also fallen into the hands of those who do not see any problem in assisting in the creation of a culture of lies.

How “advancement” in technology has affected human consciousness in this context can be estimated from the fact that habitations of millions of living humans appear merely as a Visual Reality to some other humans. Nicholas Mirzoeff wrote in the introduction of the Visual Culture Reader:

“Virtual reality has long been favoured by the military as a training arena, Put in to practice in the gulf war at great cost of human life, This is Visual Culture. It is not just a Part of your every day life, It is your every day life.” (Page-3).

In this context, the promotion of the culture of lies is seen as a deep conspiracy against Islam, Islamic civilization, Islamic ethics, character, and values – in short everything Islamic. This conspiracy is shaking the foundations of every word and deed and a large number of humans are rapidly turning into non-humans.