Dear all,
Read these paragraphs word by word, and think. If possible, act. I don’t care if you complained it’s quite long, you just have to. Of course it’s open for your precious comments/critics. Try to note all the ironies too.
Science for Humanity
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There was a time when the Europeans were suspicious of science and were prepared to put death the scientists whose theories seemed to challenge religious beliefs regarding life and its origins, the sun, the moon and the stars, and everything that surrounds humanity.
Now science is so completely accepted by them that the ethnic European scientists have become arrogant, believing that there is no limit to what they can do, which their people would not approve. They even believe there is no more need to go through the process of conception and birth in order to beget another living creature. They can clone replicas from tissues, determine their characters, propagating what they believe is good and eliminating what is bad. In other words they would do better than god, or what they prefer to call nature. They would in fact be playing god.
We need science and scientists. But we do not need intellectual arrogance to the point where there no longer is respect for anything except the supremacy of science.
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I pointed at the beginning that the Europeans initially feared science. They believed it would undermine their faith in their religion, Christianity. The same fear assailed the Muslims two or three centuries after the Europeans overcame their fears.
As we all know Muslims espoused science soon after the coming of the religion. The early Muslims took the word “iqra’” literally. They believed they should read and to read must result in the acquisition of knowledge. And so the Muslim scholars researched and expanded on the early scientific works of the Greeks, the Indians and the Chinese. I will not mention the names of the Muslim scientists who contributed much to the sciences- as you all know them.
Then suddenly they ceased to study science. Why? It was because the learned ones, the ulamas, the interpreters of Islam who know nothing of science, decided that “iqra’” meant studying religion only. Only those who study religion, those who were like the ulamas would gain merit in the afterworld, who should be respected, looked up to, and accepted as leaders in the world.
Science was proscribed and regarded as irrelevant to Islam. The study of science stopped abruptly.
Where before the Europeans looked to the Muslims for knowledge, after the teaching of the ulamas, the Muslims became illiterate in science. And they became incapable of keeping up with the Europeans who had learnt from them, literally their own pupils. They were not able to participate in the industrial revolution. And eventually they became dependant on the Europeans for science and the products of science.
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The Europeans feared science at first. But they overcame this fear to the point of regarding it as a religion to replace their religion. The Muslims should also overcome the fear of science but they should never forsake their religion. Science should really strengthen their faith in Islam, for they must know that the achievements of science are only possible if god, Allah, wills it.
Muslims must show the way by which science could be used for the good of mankind, not for its destruction. We must put back religion into science, give it a human face, stop the world from going over the brink of its destruction through science.
Can we do this? Some say that Muslims cannot even catch up with the ethnic Europeans in science, much less lead them. But why cannot we? Is it because Allah has endowed us with less brain than the Europeans? Certainly not. We were better scientists that the Europeans during the golden age of Muslim civilization.
Even today hundreds of thousands of Muslim scientists are contributing in scientific knowledge, are researching, are involved in leading edge technologies. But they are not doing this in Muslim countries. They are doing this in non-Muslim countries.
They are contributing to scientific advancement of countries which often are hostile to Muslims, which regard Muslims as terrorists, incapable of governing their countries etc. They are in these countries because Muslim countries are hostile, or at least inhospitable towards them. And so practically all the prominent Muslim scientists live and work in non-Muslim countries.
If we are really interested in science, including science for humanity, we have the intellectual capacity to do so. And we are rich enough to do so.
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Three-quarters of the Muslims live in abject poverty, without adequate food, without access to modern medicine, without the simple amenities that many of us take for granted. And one-fourth of Muslims wallow in wealth, living in palaces, dining tables weighed down with food that will mostly go to waste, owning luxury cars, yachts and aeroplanes, with wives encased in gold and diamonds even though they are hidden form public eyes.
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If only a fraction of what the rich among us spend on luxuries is diverted to scientific research to serve humanity, there would not be so many starving people in the world, so many Muslims living only slightly better than animals.
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All that is needed is the will. The capacities are already there.
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Perhaps devising ways of using science for humanity should be a Muslim initiative. If we do that we may regain our good reputation and honour. We can decide.
Excerpts from speech by Tun Mahathir Mohamad @ 14th Conf. of Islamic Academic Science, 21st March 2005, Kuala Lumpur.
