I received a circular email yesterday that contained quotes about Arabs and Jews by former Israeli prime minister and current leader of the right-wing Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu. It originated from the tensions surrounding the Gaza tragedy and there are no prizes for guessing the tone of Netanyahu’s views.

But what caught my eye were some of the facts that compare Jews and Muslims – hard facts I’ve noticed before that cannot simply be dismissed as Netanyahu bias.

The email points out that the total Muslim population is approximately 1.3 billion or 20% of the world’s population yet Muslims have received just 7 Nobel prizes during the award’s 100 year history; 4 for peace, 2 for medicine, 1 for literature and none for physics and economics – the email doesn’t mention the Nobel prize for chemistry.

(Indicatively, the number would be 8 if it weren’t for censorious Islamic orthodoxy.  In 1979 Pakistani physicist and devout Ahmadhi Muslim Abdus Salam quoted the Quran as he received his Nobel award from the King of Sweden. But he cannot be included among the Muslim Laureates. In 1976 the Islamic Republic of Pakistan gave the Ahmaddiyya Muslim community the Islamic order of the boot, officially classifying them as non-Muslims. In protest Salam promptly decamped for England.)

The email then compares this lamentable Islamic record with that of the total Jewish population of around 14 million or just 0.02% of the world’s population, which received 129 Nobel prizes over the same period, including a phenomenal 53 for physics and 43 for medicine – and 8 for peace.

Why is the Islamic world making such a minimal contribution to creative research, scientific progress and the advance of knowledge, especially compared with the culturally Christian West, predominantly Hindu India and primarily Confucian China?

My favourite loudmouths such as Al-Jazeera star Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi presumably think the Nobel prizes are a Jewish plot. Or that Islamic under-peformance is the fault of the crusades. Or European colonial rule.  Or Israel. Or George Bush.

Muslim professor Pervez Hoodbhoy of Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, offers a more thoughtful analysis that is worth reading in full. (here)

Noting that no major invention or discovery has emerged from the Muslim world for well over seven centuries, Hoodbhoy says that under liberal and enlightened caliphs Islam enjoyed major advances in mathematics, science and medicine during the 9th to 13th centuries – “Islam’s magnificent Golden Age”. Then rigid fundamentalist interpretations of Islam took over and long periods of darkness have followed.

He notes sadly that his own university which is rated No 2 amongst the universities of the 57 countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has 4 mosques and no bookstore.

Former Muslim Ibn Warraq has a similar analysis in his ‘Why I Am Not A Muslim’. He distinguishes three Islams: Islam 1 is what Muhammad taught as contained in the Quran; Islam 2 is the religion as subsequently expounded, interpreted and developed in the traditions (hadith) including sharia and Islamic law; and Islam 3 is what Muslims actually did and achieved, that is Islamic civilisation and culture.

Ibn Warraq reckons that Islamic civilisations often reached magnificent heights despite Islams 1 and 2, and not because of them. It seems that the further Muslim societies are away from these two Islams, so the philosophy, science, literature and art of Islam 3 can better flower and flourish.

Some blame Islam’s lack of achievement on the West’s apparent superiority in the marketplace, the battlefield and the public square over the past couple of centuries.

Maybe the cause lies rather within Islam itself.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Islam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.