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Why
do Muslims Underachieve?
by Thierry Gattuso
Muslims make up 22% of the World's population, according
to the United Nations' Arab Human Development Report: "Half
of Arab women cannot read; One in five Arabs live on less than $2
per day; Only 1 percent of the Arab population has a personal computer,
and only half of 1 percent use the Internet; Fifteen percent of the
Arab workforce is unemployed; 60% of Muslims are illiterate". Only
two Muslims have won the Nobel prize in a scientific field - Dr.
Abdus Salam, in 1979 for Physics and Dr. Ahmed Zewail, in 1992 for
Chemistry. Dr Salam a native of Pakistan , is not considered to be
a Muslim in his home country as he follows the Ahmadiyyas sect of
Islam.
Only 600 universities service a Muslim population of 1.2 billion
in 57 countries. Half the universities concentrate on teaching Islamic
education and science. India has 8,407 universities for 1 billion
people and the United States has 5,758 for 280 million people. The
combined annual GDP (purchasing power parity basis) of the 57 Muslim
countries is under $2 trillion. The US produces goods and services
worth $10.4 trillion; China $5.7 trillion, Japan $3.5 trillion, India
$3 trillion and Germany $2.1 trillion. The oil rich states Saudi
Arabia , United Arab Emirates , Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce
goods and services worth $430 billion; Thailand alone produces goods
and services worth $429 billion.
Underachievement by Muslims was not always the case claim Muslims
and point to a glorious and illustrious time when the Arab Muslim
empire was the most advanced and enlightened in the world. Many discoveries
were made in the period 750 - 1250 AD according to Muslims. Critical
analysis of this period shows that many of the advancements and discoveries
we falsely attribute to Muslims were actually made by the ancient
civilisations of the Mediterranean area, or by the ancient Chinese
and Indian civilisations.
Muslims believe, that glass mirrors, were first developed by Muslim
Spain in the 11th century. Around 1290 Venetians learned how to produce
glass from the Spanish Muslims. The Romans invented the glass mirror
around the 1st century. Research by Reinuad and Fave, indicates that
Muslims chemists were the first to develop the formula for gunpowder
and later produced firearms. The Chinese knew the formula for gunpowder
and used it for military purposes during the Sung dynasty of the
12th century. Muslims boast that they laid the foundations for modern
mathematics and two of its main branches, geometry and trigonometry.
The Muslim contribution was merely to collect and combine the work
done by the Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Persians and Romans. The
Indian civilisation gave us the concept of zero and modern numbers.
Brahmagupta, an Indian mathematician, (598 - 665 AD) can be accredited
with the initial work on algebra and negative numbers. The trigonometry
terms sine and cosine have there origin in Sanskrit, the ancient
language of India .
The underachievement and underperformance by Muslims is acute in
the 57 Islamic countries. Muslims claim that they are recovering
from a long period of colonisation and de colonisation and the effects
of the removal of the Palestinian people from Arab lands. How about
the achievements of Muslims who live and work in the West? Well the
truth is not that much better than their cousins in Muslim countries.
The United Kingdom census of 2001 for the first time looked at the
nation's religious background. The findings showed that Muslims make
up 2.8% of the UK population. Hindus 1%, Sikhs 0.6, Buddhists and
Jews both make up 0.5% of the UK population. 31% of Muslims of working
age have no qualifications, the highest of any religious group. As
in many countries owing your own home is a major achievement and
financial responsibility. 82% of Sikhs followed by 78% of Jews own
their own home in the UK . Only 52% of Muslims own their own home,
the lowest of any religious group. 14% of Muslims are unemployed,
compared to 8% of Sikhs and 6% of Hindus. The underachievement of
Muslims is even more bleak when you examine where most Muslims, Hindus,
Sikhs and Buddhist in the UK come from. 75% of Muslims, 97% of Hindus,
98 % of Sikhs and 69% of Buddhists in the UK are from or have ancestral
links to South Asia . Therefore any cultural factors can be largely
ruled out when comparing the achievement of Muslims with people from
other religious groups. Muslims complain that they have to overcome
language difficulties and face discrimination in the UK and state
this as a factor in there poor performance. Buddhists, Hindus and
Sikhs face the same language and discrimination issues as Muslims,
yet their achievements and performance is much better than Muslims.
The underachievement of Muslims should come as no surprise to those
of us who understand the true nature of Islam. Everything a Muslim
needs to know is in the Koran, Hadith or Sunnah. Muslims are not
encouraged to seek knowledge and better themselves. Muslims are against
progress, modernity and science. Those that control Islam do not
want to see Muslims educated as an educated Muslim will apply commonsense
and logic to the Koran and see it for what its is, a collection of
distorted Bible and Torah stories and in print the mind of a 7th
century Bedouin bandit leader.
References
United Nations' Arab Human Development Report 2002
United Nations' Arab Human Development Report 2003
World Book Encyclopaedia
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Chronology of Science and Discovery Isaac Asimov's
Very interesting (and very accurate),
Mo (PBUM)
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