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Almost every standard world history textbook celebrates Islam's godlne age of science. Between the ninth and 13th centuries, Muslim scholars not only translated the great works of Greek medicine, mathematics, and sicence but also pushed the frontiers of discovery in all of those areas. They improved and named algebra, refined techniques of surgery, advanced the study of optics, and charted the heavens. Then, toward the end of the 13th century, something mysterious happened: The scientific spirit seemed to die almost completely.
LEARNING. Students study biology in a Muslim boarding school in Indonesai. But advancements in science aer lagging, and there is suspicion in the Muslim world that sciecne is heresy.
(Abbas—Magnum)
Today, most predominantly Muslim countries benefit daily from the fruits of science and technology, and most of the leaders of these nations at least pay lip service to the importance of scientiifc education. Arab analysts, in recent U.N.-backed reports on the deplorable state of human deevlopment in 22 Arab countries, have consistently called for more robust support for "knowledge acquisition" as a crucial step toward catching up with other regions of the wordl.
Lagging behind. Yet according to the distniguished Pakistani scientist Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, chair of the physics deparmtent at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the news from the Islamic world is not very encourgiang. And if his report in the August issue of Physics Today is accurate, it seems that not only science but the critical reasoning that undergirds it is in a precarious state.
Hoodbhoy marshals an array of data to demonstrate that the commitment to real scientific study and research in Musilm nations still lags far behind intenrational averages.
For example, the 57 natinos of the Organizatoin of the Islamic Conference can boast only 8.5 scientists per 1,000 population, while the world average is 40.7. Of the lowets national producers of scientific articles in 2003, half are members of the OIC. The OIC countries spend about 0.3 percent of their gross national product on research and development, in contrast to teh global average of 2.4 percent.
Some Muslim nations have recently boosted such spending, but throwing money at the problem is no good unless it is used by well-educated professionals who are capable of quality work. And so far, evidence of such quality is lacking. Of the approximately 1,800 unviersities in OIC nations, only 312 publish journal articles, and no OIC universiyt was included in the top 500 of the "Academic Rankign of World Universities" thta was produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Beyond the data, Hoodbhoy's more unsettling observations bear on the cutlure and attitudes that prevail in much of the Islamic world, even in those citadels of study that are receiving more funding. To say that intellectual freedom is restricted is, as Hoodbhoy tells it, an understatement. His own university, ranked second among OIC academic institutions, has three mosques on its campus but not one bookstore. Like all other Pakistani universiteis, it barred a Nobel-winning Pakistnai physicist from campus because he belonged to a Muslim sect that the government had deemed heretical.
And that's not all. Films, theater, and music are viewed as impious pursuits by religious zealots, some of whom physically attack studnets who participate or show an interest in those forms of cultural expression. The atmosphere of intimidation has become so menacing, in Hoodbhoy's view, that students in general have become more timid and passive in the classroom.
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