Dilemma of the Muslim World – Sheikhs or Scientists?

GDP and Poverty - lands of broken dreams;

The Muslim world is in a terrible state. The combined annual GDP of 50 Muslim majority countries remains a grand total of $4.8 trillion. This is a rather sorry figure as USA alone produces goods and services worth $15 trillion while the corresponding figures for China ($5.8 trillion) and Japan ($5.4 trillion) remain comfortably above that of the entire Muslim world combined. Even India’s GDP is estimated at over $5 trillion on purchasing power parity basis.

The oil giants of Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $1 trillion.  South Korea alone has a higher annual GDP while the tiny island state of Taiwan produces goods and services worth $0.8 trillion.

Of the 50 poorest countries in the world, half are Muslim majority countries, including Pakistan. Muslims are 22 percent of the world population and produce less than seven percent of global GDP. Even more worrying is the fact that the Muslim countries’ GDP as a percent of the global GDP is going down over time.

 The Arabs, it seems, will be particularly worse off in the coming years. The United Nation’s Arab Human Development report of 2009 says “In addition to oil rents, Arab economies depend on rentier income from property, from foreign goods import agencies, and from financial and exchange operations; they have yet to enter the age of revenues derived from the technological capacity to produce modern goods and services based more on knowledge than on manual labour.”

Another important fact to consider is that the figures above look better than they really are. All of the above figures relate to 2010 when most of the developed world was in the middle of a deep economic crisis. At the same time, the Muslim world was enjoying a time of relative prosperity because of high petroleum prices. Once normalcy resumes and our natural resources begin to wear thin, an even grimmer situation awaits us.

Knowledge is Power;

Fifty-seven Muslim majority countries have an average of ten universities each for a total of less than 600 universities for 1.4 billion people; India has 8,407 universities, the U.S. has 5,758.

Over the past 105 years, 1.4 billion Muslims have produced eight Nobel Laureates while a mere 14 million Jews have produced 167 Nobel Laureates. Of the 1.4 billion Muslims less than 300,000 qualify as ‘scientists’, and that converts to a ratio of 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The United States of America has 1.1 million scientists (4,099 per million); Japan has 700,000 (5,095 per million).

Dr Farruk Saleem writes, “As per data collected by the UNDP, literacy in the Christian world stands at nearly 90 per cent and 15 Christian-majority states have a literacy rate of 100 per cent. A Muslim-majority state, as a sharp contrast, has an average literacy rate of around 40 per cent and there is no Muslim-majority state with a literacy rate of 100 per cent. Some 98 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world had completed primary school, while less than 50 per cent of the 'literates' in the Muslim world did the same. Around 40 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world attended university while no more than two per cent of the 'literates' in the Muslim world did the same.”

Also consider, for instance, that Muslims constitute 22 percent of world population with a 1 percent share of Nobel Prizes. Jews constitute 0.23 percent of world population with a 22 percent share of Nobel Prizes. From within 1.4 billion Muslims Abdus Salam and Ahmed Zewail are the only two Muslim men who won a Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry (Salam pursued his scientific work in Italy and the UK, Zewail at California Institute of Technology).

A curious case of wrong priorities; Sheikhs or Scientists?

Now contrast this material state of affairs with the “spiritual” and “divine” aspect of things and take Pakistan as a test case. Pakistan has the highest number of “Sheikh-ul-Hadith” and “Sheikh-ul-Quran” in the world (these are the highest qualifications one can attain in Islamic Studies in the Sub Continent). The numbers of qualified experts in Islamic legal matters, Mufti, are also second to none. This is in addition to many self-proclaimed Reformers of the Century (Mujadid), that we have produced. The country also has the biggest and, on Fridays, most densely packed mosques in the world but is also among the countries with the smallest scientific expenditure per head. While mosques are flourishing and expanding (please don’t pounce on it, the criticism is not on the increasing numbers of mosques), the libraries and laboratories are not even keeping up with the pace of population increase.

The whole country of 170 million Muslims has fewer than 30 universities. Contrast this with a random example of a minor university from Scotland. Glasgow Caledonian University, with 14,000 students, has a higher budget than the entire higher education sector of Pakistan combined. Incidentally, Scotland, with a population of 6 million has 15 universities, 10 of which are in top 400 universities in the world.

There are more “Hafiz” of Quran (a Hafiz is a person who memorizes Quran by rote) in Pakistan than all the rest of the world combined but it is also the land with the smallest number of scientists per head of population in the world. 40% of all book/magazine titles published in Pakistan are related to religion in some way and it produces some cutting-edge and most up to date religious commentary in the world while quality research publications on science and technology are virtually non-existent. In other words, the “religious literacy and achievement”, if we count all the experts in theology and the like, is extremely impressive while the scientific literacy remains the lowest in the entire world – even some sub-Saharan African countries do better than Pakistan on this front.

Is there an end?

What really went wrong? What brought us to the current state of affairs? There are two possible answers.

Firstly, Muslims are poor, illiterate and weak because we have ‘abandoned the divine heritage of Islam’. In order to rectify the situation, we must return to our real or imagined past. Let’s get together and produce more qualifies theologians, bigger places of worship and publish even more religious books.

Second answer could be that Muslims are poor, illiterate and weak because we have refused to change with time.

Keep pace with time — al Quran.

The door is wide open and it is up to us whatever path we wish to tread. I personally am all in favor of the first solution!

(Mohammad Jawad)