Muslims have lost sight of heritage, claims professor
A chief reason for the problems besetting Muslims today is that they have lost sight of their rich scientific heritage, it was claimed today.
Professor Ziauddin Sardar, editor of Futures Journal, pointed out that historically science and religion were inextricably bound together in Islam.
The faith had originally given immense emphasis to scientific knowledge, seeing it as a gift to be shared with the general population.
A thousand years ago this had seen the construction of great scientific libraries, universities, observatories and hospitals which laid the foundations for much of modern medicine.
But in about the 14th century, Muslims deliberately abandoned scientific inquiry “in favour of ignorance and blind imitation” said Professor Sardar.
The once great tradition of Islamic science had now degenerated to a few research programmes in “nuclear weapons and chemical and biological warfare” he told the British Association Festival of Science.
Professor Sardar was speaking at the University of Salford on the eve of the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
He said: “The contemporary situation of the Muslim world, the kind of desperation that Moslems find themselves in with mass poverty, underdevelopment, the kind of despotic structures that we have, this is the end product of the disappearance of scientific spirit from Muslim society.
“The future of Islam is a function of how Islam relates to science in contemporary times. Science not in an elitist sense, but in a mass participation sense where science relates to ordinary people and communicates with them, and makes them better Muslims at the end of the day.
“It’s a better way of being a Muslim than launching a suicide attack.”
