The Qur’an started with the word “Iqra,” which means “Read.” It teaches us to say: “Rabbi zidni ‘Ilmaa” (O Lord, increase me in knowledge. (20-114) Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, “A scholar’s ink is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.” Allah created humans to be superior to all other creations. The major use of knowledge and aql (intelligence) is to develop critical thinking, necessary to make rational, sustainable decisions.

During the early period of Islam, between the 7th and 15th centuries, Muslims acquired knowledge in fields of architecture, astronomy, the sciences, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. In the 9th century, the House of Wisdom (Bait Al-Hikma) was established, which attracted scholars from many parts of the world.

The work of great scholars like Aristotle, Euclid, Galen, Ptolemy, Socrates, and more was collected, preserved, and translated into Arabic. By the 11th century, all major Muslim cities (Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba) had major institutions like universities, hospitals, and scientific laboratories.

Muslims became leaders of knowledge, and people from all over the world would go to Muslim cities for higher education. Muslim physicians performed complicated eye surgeries 600 years before Europeans began to do so. They measured the circumference of the earth and values for specific gravities correct to three decimal places 1,000 years ago. Muslim scientists got the concept of zero from India, and substituted it for the Roman numeral, resulting in a more manageable decimal system in use today. There is no field of knowledge where Muslims did not explore, investigate, research, think, or invent exemplary innovations.

Some of the noted Muslim scholars of the medieval period were: Ibn Al-Baitar, Ibn Al-Nafis, Nasir Al-Din Al-Tusi, Al-Battani, Omar Khayyam, Al-Kindi, Al-Biruni, Thabit Ibn, Al-Zahrawi, Jabir ibn Hayyan, Al-Khwarizmi, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, Ibn Al-Haytham, Ibne Khaldun, Ibne Rushd, Ibne Batuta,

Al-Idrisi, and Ibn-Sina (Avicenna), whose medical encyclopedia, “The Canon of Medicine,” became a standard medical reference in universities for 500 years.

Just Google it, and you will find their contributions aplenty. Mainstream Western history acknowledges the work was done by Greek and Roman scholars up to 300 CE and then mysteriously jumps to 1500 CE, i.e., the European Renaissance. It left nearly 800 years—from the 7th to the 15th centuries—of social, political, or scientific developments out of discussion.

H.J. Morowitz, a historian, described this phenomenon as ‘History’s Black Hole,’ stating: “The impression (is) given that the Renaissance arose phoenix-like from the ashes–smoldering for a millennium–of the classical age of Greece and Rome.” It is, in fact, the Muslim contributions in that prior time that led to the European Renaissance of the Elizabethan period, and ultimately inspired the democratic ideals of our constitution, as well as the current cross-cultural climate of the U.S.

Decline of the Muslim ummah

In the 11th century, the separation of the revealed (“Qur’anic”) sources from the rational sources of knowledge was raised by distinguished Muslim scholars.

They insisted on the supremacy of the revealed source, which was of divine origin, insisting that it should not be complemented or supplemented with rational sources of knowledge, which they believed to be inferior and would bring a corrupting influence on the revealed knowledge. Consequently, the madrasas in the Islamic realm abandoned research in and the teaching of scientific themes. The schools and universities were engaged in reading the Qur’an without teaching its meaning, and teaching Fiqh (religious jurisprudence) – which is important for Muslim – to extreme detail, but taught it without the freedom of expression and critical thinking.

The great Renaissance Movement, which transformed Europe into a dynamic and progressive civilization, did not impact the neighboring Islamic countries because of the continued inflexible attitude of the orthodox, dogmatic Muslim jurists who only promoted the revealed sources.

Post-colonial Muslim countries were more preoccupied with consolidating their own political power rather than promoting the advancement of knowledge. As a consequence, Muslims have been suffering from this ignorance. There are no contributions by Muslim scientists in Muslim countries in the technological revolution of the 20th century that has radically changed the world.

The state of Muslims today

There are only 500 universities in the 57 Muslim countries, whereas the US alone has 5,758 universities and India 8,407. Not one university in the entire Islamic world is featured in the top 500 universities in the world.

The Christian world has a 90% literacy rate; the Muslim world is 40% (where the illiteracy rate for Muslim women is 90%). The Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per million, whereas the USA has 5,000 per million.

Population-wise, globally Muslims number more than 1.6 billion. Jews are roughly 14.4 million. Yet, there are 193 Jewish Nobel Laureates, far ahead of Muslims with 12 Nobel Prize winners.

In the US, Muslims are preoccupied with the Islamization of science and medicine. Muslim scientists in medieval times impartially acquired knowledge from earlier scholars and then contributed their own original work to it. Ibn Sina’s medical work was not Islamic because he was a Muslim, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity is not Jewish physics because he happens to be Jewish, and Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity is not Christian theory because Newton was a Christian.

Scientific methods are based on objectivity and rationality, not on the religion of the scientist. There are rich Muslim countries, endowed with natural resources in abundance. However, they spend little to build universities and produce scientists, engineers, and technocrats.

We need an education system which can produce Muslim experts in all fields of knowledge who can reconstruct the social order and justice. By having good educational programs, future generations will become the torchbearers of Islamic values and play an effective role in the world. Education of women is the key to the success of a society. We need to develop and effectively apply critical thinking skills to the complex problems that we face, and to the critical choices we will be forced to make as a result of the information explosion and other rapid technological changes.