The race of civilizations (III)

The attempt by some writers to ascribe the low-level technology in the contemporary Muslim world to the thirteenth century Mongol invasion is, in my view, an escapist explanation of the tragedy. The Mongols from central Asia stormed Baghdad in 1258, plundered and killed 50,000 people including the last Abbasid Caliph. They devastated libraries and schools, […]

The attempt by some writers to ascribe the low-level technology in the contemporary Muslim world to the thirteenth century Mongol invasion is, in my view, an escapist explanation of the tragedy. The Mongols from central Asia stormed Baghdad in 1258, plundered and killed 50,000 people including the last Abbasid Caliph. They devastated libraries and schools, which had made Baghdad the cultural capital of the Islamic world. Even the fall of Granada in to the hands of Philip in 1498 which meant the fall of Muslim Spain’s glory cannot justify the sheer intellectual laziness that characterized the Muslim world in the past five centuries.
While history reminds us that catholic Spain destroyed all the progressive ideas and institutions developed by the Arab genius of Cordova and Granada in Arab Spain (Andalusia), it is not reasonable that such is used to excuse our refusal (as torch-bearers of civilization that once held sway for eight centuries in Arab Spain) to carry on from where past Muslim scholars including Ibn Baytar (the botanist) stopped. Although the Ottoman Empire reached its height in the sixteenth century, it failed to restore the cultural brilliance that the Muslim world had known under the Abbasid Caliphs of Baghdad.
After Arab philosophers and scientists of the ninth, tenth through the thirteenth centuries dropped their pens for posterity to improve upon, the succeeding generation of Arabs and indeed Muslim scholars discontinued with scientific experiment and learning. This marked the beginning of the scientific stagnation that over time resulted in today’s backwardness of the Muslim world. Europe which inherited scientific thinking of the Greeks from Arabs continued to explore those basic assumptions initiated by Greek philosophy and developed further by Arab philosophers until the emergence of the scientific revolution that eventually transformed human society.
Soon, Arabs replaced the ink of their scholars with perfume; their pens with cigarette sticks; their libraries with palaces; and their bookshelves with wardrobes. As the inventor of the pin-hole camera, the Muslim world neither owns Sony nor any of the most popular camera manufacturing companies. As pioneers in the art of parachuting, the Muslim world is nowhere today in the technology. It is amazing that some parts of the Muslim world today doubt the efficacy vaccination which was a brain-child of Arab scientists.
The Arabs (recognized as traditional and natural custodian of Islam) who led the translation movement of the Abbasid dynasty and whose Empire under the Ottoman regime stretched from Spain to India with a common language (Arabic) and a common culture; have failed to render the scientific theories of the west in to their tongue (Arabic); a language universally described by linguists as the richest in the world. Till date, English remains the language of instruction in the study of medicine and engineering at graduate level in the Arab world.
Realizing the different aspects of the intellectual and scientific crisis faced by the Muslim world, the first world conference on Muslim Education held at Makkah in 1977; to initiate among other goals how Muslim scholars are expected to direct their research, produce text books, and formulate Islamic concepts for all branches of knowledge. This conference implicitly kick-started the “Islamization of knowledge” programme in many parts of the Muslim world. The extent to which this programme has succeeded in concepts and contents remains a billion dinar question for both the Arab and non-Arab scholars of the Muslim world to answer.
The Muslim world, as the former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mohammad Mahathir puts it, has not been able to catch up because it was preoccupied with bickering regarding the interpretations of religion or its text. “Governments in Muslim countries are forever”, he also observed, “being attacked by extremist Muslims; busy trying to defend their Islamic credentials”. Muslims and their countries consequently missed the industrial revolution in Europe; losing out equally in the design and production of the instruments of progress. Mahathir forgot to add that the Muslim world has also missed the latest revolution in information technology. The Muslim world will continue to miss these essential ingredients of survival in the modern world as long as it remains a spectator in the race of civilizations; a sure gateway to marginalization and permanent domination by those whose new ideas continue change world’s perception of things.
The Muslim world was watching when other than Europeans and Americans fashioned out their own model of civilization. By Allah’s grace, countries in Asia including China, North Korea, and South Korea, and even India added value to the scientific concepts of the west. The Chinese are today all over the Muslim world building edifices, railways and roads. While it is important to quote from Qur’an and Hadith to guide our daily life, and even disagree when necessary over their meanings; it is on the Muslim world to blunt the challenges of a globalized world now. With appropriate strategies, I’m optimistic that the Muslim world could still catch up and even bring back the golden age of Islam because it has the talents and the capacity to do so. May Allah (SWT) guide us to achieve that, amin.