Question 2
Islam today is facing challenges from within and from the wider world. The attitudes and criticisms common in
the outside world can be ignored as misguided, but the tensions within Islam throughout the world must be
confronted.
Acquiring knowledge and skills is mandatory in Islam. Those who learn science, mathematics and acquire
technological skills are therefore obeying and fulfilling the injunctions of Islam.
There was time when Muslim countries were strong militarily and economically, and were advanced in the
sciences and technology. During those glorious years of the Muslim civilization, Muslims were not oppressed.
Muslims were respected and feared. Europeans had to learn from Muslims new knowledge as well as those of
the Greeks and others, which the Muslims had studied, translated into Arabic and enhanced. The Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh) brought only one Deen from Allah (SWT) that is al- Islam. But today there are many
Islamic sects. They are the results of differing interpretations about Islam by different scholars through the
centuries.
As Science and Technology are fundamentally important for a nation to keep pace in the race of development,
Muslim countries should promote cooperation and interaction in these areas. Muslim countries should put their
joint efforts in order to develop their technological know-how in the productive areas of their economy and
initiate some basic research if possible. This will help reducing the brain drain of the talented scientists from
their countries.
There is nothing in the teachings of Islam that contends against learning, against science, and against
technology. The pursuit of knowledge and scientific research is the birthright of every Muslim woman and
every Muslim man.
Currently the problem in the Muslim countries is that the Ulema do not have any knowledge of modern science
and technology and the Muslim scientists and technologists do not have mastery of Islamic sources of
knowledge.
Lack of funding is a major obstacle but not the only reason for the appalling status of science in the wider
Muslim world. Certainly for poorer nations, lack of resources is a problem, and they may view science as a
luxury they cannot afford. Governments mostly exacerbate the problems of low investment because they lack
the strategies to foster science and to prioritize research projects.
One of the biggest challenges facing Muslim countries is that science is too often viewed as a commodity that
can be separated from the thought processes that led to it. Believing that oil money can simply buy Western
technology, wealthy Arab states do little beyond consuming science and technology products. But to flourish,
science and technology need a cultural base that can only be acquired by science education and by undertaking
research programmers. This effort requires, above all, a return to the patronage of the past, when science had
support at the highest echelons of Muslim society.
Muslim science had a golden age between the eighth and thirteenth centuries and then declined. There are
external reasons for the decline of Muslim science, including the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, but
internal factors, such as growing isolation, growth of authoritative regimes, discouragement of innovation and
restrictions on freedom of expression, were probably more decisive. In general, there was a shift, starting
around 1100, from a rational and tolerant attitude to a more conservative school of thinking that denounced
philosophy and rationalism.