….though religious extremism certainly was the reason why Abdus Salam had to leave his native land for good and whose glorious contributions to science will forever be disowned by his own (majority) countrymen.
…..
According to Thomson Reuters’ Science Watch,
the Arabian, Persian and Turkish Middle East produces only 4% of the
world’s scientific literature. Paltry by almost any standards, that
value is even more diminutive when paired with the fact that the Middle
East, at one time, led the world in science.
So what happened?
It’s easy to point to modern fundamentalists in the Middle East and utter a single answer: “religion.” But most historians of science
dismiss this oversimplified explanation. Instead, a confluence of
factors ended science’s golden age in the Muslim world, and created a
mire in which science has been bogged down ever since.
War was perhaps the biggest reason for the decline.
In the 11th and 12th Centuries, crusading Christian armies from Europe
invaded the Middle East in order to reclaim the Holy Land. The attack
left the Islamic Empire severely weakened. When the Mongols invaded from
the east some years later, they were met with meager resistance.
Ultimately, Baghdad was put to the torch in 1258, along with a great
deal of priceless books and manuscripts.
Fast forward to the 1400s. The printing press is beginning to
revolutionize the spread of ideas. Sadly, the Muslim world is left out
for a crucial two hundred years. The Arabic language, which in the past
served science incredibly well due to its precision, proved unwieldy for
typesetters. While ideas flowed in Europe, mostly through books printed
in Latin, their spread stagnated in the Middle East.
Christopher Columbus’ discovery of “The New World” was another nail
in the coffin of Islamic science. Suddenly, trade routes changed, and
money started pouring into Spain, Italy,
and England instead of the Middle East. In turn, wealthy benefactors
began bankrolling scientific endeavors in Europe. Concurrently, squalor
began seeping into the Muslim world.
Though Islam can be interpreted as condoning,
even compelling, the study and exploration of the natural world, that
view has been in the minority among those in power. Thus, it is
political autocracy and theocracy that has likely held science back in
the Middle East for the last century or so. Science appears to be germinating in parts of the Islamic world — in Iran and Turkey, for example — but whether the trend will continue remains to be seen.
…..
regards
