GUILDFORD – Muslim governments know that economic growth, military power, and national security benefit greatly from technological advances. Many of them have sharply increased funding for science and education in recent years. And yet, in the view of many – especially in the West – the Muslim world still seems to prefer to remain disengaged from modern science.
These skeptics are not entirely wrong. Muslim-majority countries spend, on average, less than 0.5% of their GDP on research and development, compared with five times that in the advanced economies. They also have fewer than ten scientists, engineers, and technicians per thousand residents, compared to the global average of 40 – and 140 in the developed world. And even these figures tend to understate the problem, which is less about spending money or employing researchers than about the basic quality of the science being produced.
To be sure, one should not be overly hasty in singling out Muslim countries for criticism; even in the supposedly “enlightened” West, an alarmingly high proportion of the population regards science with suspicion or fear. And yet, in many parts of the Muslim world, science faces a unique challenge; it is seen as a secular – if not atheist – Western construct.
Too many Muslims have forgotten – or never learned about – the brilliant scientific contributions made by Islamic scholars a thousand years ago. They do not regard modern science as indifferent or neutral with respect to Islamic teaching. Indeed, some prominent Islamic writers have even argued that scientific disciplines such as cosmology actually undermine the Islamic belief system. According to the Muslim philosopher Osman Bakar, science comes under attack on the grounds that it “seeks to explain natural phenomena without recourse to spiritual or metaphysical causes, but rather in terms of natural or material causes alone.”
Bakar is of course entirely correct. Seeking to explain natural phenomena without recourse to metaphysics is exactly what science is about. But it is difficult to think of a better defense of it than the one offered almost exactly 1,000 years ago by the 11th-century Persian Muslim polymath Abu Rayhan al-Birūni. “It is knowledge, in general, which is pursued solely by man, and which is pursued for the sake of knowledge itself, because its acquisition is truly delightful, and is unlike the pleasures desirable from other pursuits,” al-Birūni wrote. “For the good cannot be brought forth, and evil cannot be avoided, except by knowledge.”
Fortunately, a growing number of Muslims today would agree. And, given the tension and polarization between the Islamic world and the West, it is not surprising that many feel indignant when accused of being culturally or intellectually unequipped for competitiveness in science and technology. Indeed, that is why governments across the Muslim world are increasing their R&D budgets sharply.
But throwing money at the problem is no panacea. Scientists do require adequate financing, of course, but competing globally requires more than just the latest shiny equipment. The entire infrastructure of the research environment needs to be addressed. That means not only ensuring that laboratory technicians understand how to use and maintain the equipment, but also – and far more important – nurturing the intellectual freedom, skepticism, and courage to ask heterodox questions on which scientific progress depends.
If the Muslim world is to become a center of innovation again, it is useful to recall the Islamic “golden age” that stretched from the eighth century well into the fifteenth. For example, the year 2021 will mark a millennium since the publication of Ibn al-Haytham’s Book of Optics, one of the most important texts in the history of science. Written more than 600 years before the birth of Isaac Newton, al-Haytham’s work is widely regarded as one of the earliest examples of the modern scientific method.
Among the most famous of this era’s intellectual epicenters was Baghdad’s House of Wisdom, at the time the largest repository of books in the world. Historians may bicker over whether such an academy truly existed and what function it served; but such arguments are less relevant than the symbolic power it still holds in the Islamic world.
When Gulf state leaders talk about their multi-billion-dollar visions of creating a new House of Wisdom, they are not concerned about whether the original was just a modest library that a caliph inherited from his father. They want to reanimate the spirit of free inquiry that has been lost in Islamic culture and that urgently needs to be recovered.
To achieve that, daunting challenges remain to be overcome. Many countries devote an unusually large share of research funding toward military technology, a phenomenon driven more by geopolitics and the unfolding tragedies in the Middle East than by a thirst for pure knowledge. The brightest young scientists and engineers in Syria have more pressing matters on their minds than basic research and innovation. And few in the Arab world are likely to view advances in Iranian nuclear technology with the same equanimity as developments in Malaysia’s software industry.
But it is nonetheless important to recognize how much Muslim countries could contribute to humankind by nurturing once again the spirit of curiosity that drives scientific inquiry – whether to marvel at divine creation or just to try to understand why things are the way they are.
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Comment Commented j. von Hettlingen
With the rise of an archaic and a barbaric caliphate set up by ISIS, Jim Al-Khalili seeks to show the other side of the Muslim world, to counter Western belief that it is "disengaged from modern science." Indeed, IS leaders deny people they subjugate the pursuit of modern civilisation and attempt to turn the clock of history back to the Middle Ages.
Another fact is that rich Muslim countries spend "less than 0.5% of their GDP on research and development, compared with five times that in the advanced economies." This prompts many Muslims to feel snubbed and "indignant when accused of being culturally or intellectually unequipped for competitiveness in science and technology."
Although "governments across the Muslim world are increasing their R&D budgets sharply," it doesn't benefit the wider population, because education is not universal and its curriculums have a narrow focus. Wedded to the past, and obsessed with taboos, heresies, the curriculums are unable to produce persons of creative minds and innovative ways of thinking. There is little appreciation for critical thoughts and visionary ideas, and all sorts of freedoms, sciences, inventions and innovations are suppressed and restrained. According to the author, "in many parts of the Muslim world, science faces a unique challenge; it is seen as a secular – if not atheist – Western construct."
Perhaps many Muslims haven't been told, or they have forgotten about Iraq's "Golden Age" of science, with Baghdad’s House of Wisdom as this era’s intellectual epicenter a thousand years ago. During the first century after the birth of Islam, Muslim armies defeated the Persians and moved into Iraq. Around 762, the Abbasid caliphs established their capital in Baghdad from where they ruled the vast Muslim empire for the next five centuries. While Europe and scientific progress slumbered in a period known as the Dark Ages, it saw a huge blossoming of science and scholarship in the Islamic world between the "8th and 15th" centuries. It was a period in which the Ummayyad and Abbasid Caliphs created one of the greatest centres of learning the world had ever known - the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.
For many thousand years, Iraq was a key centre of scientific knowledge. It comes as no surprise that ISIS sees pre-Islamic history and civilisation as an anathema to its ideology, because ISIS embraces Salafi jihadism, which has its backers among Saudis and other Sunni Arabs in the region. According to the Saudi Wahhabism, the puritanical interpretation of Islam deems the preservation of ancient artefacts and monuments to be a form of idolatry, and sees the worshiping at shrines as apostasy. ISIS had destroyed numerous cultural artefacts and monuments of historic significance in its rampage across Iraq and Syria. The ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia represent some of mankind’s earliest experiments in writing, government, administration, city life, agriculture and engineering. For the Islamic State, any viewpoint inconsistent with the Caliphate’s decrees is a threat to its supreme authority - and must be destroyed. As long as ordinary citizens in the Muslim world don't have access to an education and job opportunities, they fall victims to ISIS recruitment. It doesn't help if "many countries devote an unusually large share of research funding toward military technology," It would not guarantee security. Read more
Comment Commented Hamid Rizvi
Perhaps it it will do some good to the Muslim World to unanchor themselves from the dubious achievents of the past 1000 years and step into the 21st century. Live a little my good man! Read more
Comment Commented Stop Spamming
Can anyone actually show me "brilliant scientific contributions made by Islamic scholars a thousand years ago"?
I have searched and searched and have been unable to find one.
I find plenty of claims, but no significant inventions or discoveries.
All I have managed to find are advancements and modifications, nothing groundbreaking.
Also, why do I never hear or Zoroastrian or Rastafarian science or inventions? Why are groundbreaking inventions and discoveries linked to scientific research or a name - never ideologies? Read more
Comment Commented Steve Hurst
The muslim hose of wisdom can only be rebuilt by muslims
Any house has to have foundations and 0.5% GDP expenditure is unlikely to be enough of a foundation
How anybody can refer back to the middle ages is beyond me, its totally irrelevent and not a foundation for anything. The foundation has to be contemporary. There is no way around it - much of muslim society - despite the odd spot of enlightenment - is fundamentally opposed to progress. The predeliction for public state beheadings by sword in some locations is symbolic in so many ways. How old is that practice Read more
Comment Commented J B
The author's argumentation suffers from two principle faults:
1. Despite the knowledge ancient scientist have produced their intellectual framework was utterly different from the modern one, a fact that the work of historians like Anthony Grafton (cf. his book "Cardano's Cosmos") sheds light on. For the renaissance-astrologer Girolamo Cardano there was no contradiction in demanding precise observation and clear mathematical description of the phenomena and at the same time believing that the stars have a real influence on human's fates. In other words: For our ancestors the physical world and the spiritual world were influencing each other, but their respective systems of description did not produce any contradictions for them. That is not the case anymore. So there is no point in drawing on the example of ancient scholars to show the intellectual capacity of a contemporary culture.
2. Today we have established a world-wide scientific community. What does that mean? Although we have bright hot spots of scientific work today, too, new scientific knowledge yielded by, say, Japanese, South Korean or Chinese scientists is in principle acknowledged and considered the same way as if it were produced by scientists from Harvard, Oxford, Heidelberg or Paris. If the United States are still in the first flight of scientific progress it is not because of their status as a bright center of the world but because their scientists and institutions prevail in the global competition.
So all that Muslim scientists can achieve today is catching up with the scientific community rather than restoring a "Muslim House of Wisdom". It ist their decision to deem that sufficient. If they don't they will fail. Read more
Comment Commented Robbie Jena
Wisdom needs actual Data that provides situation awareness which helps the Knowledge and then you can have the Wisdom. Keep working from theory to practice... Read more
Comment Commented Marc Laventurier
Perhaps an appropriate site for a House of Wisdom would be Alexandria ( الإسكندرية ). Read more
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