Why do Moslems Underachieve?
Thierry Gattuso
2005/11/24
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 Sumerians were immensely inventive. Obviously, it would be grossly unfair to leave out the Egyptians, but you haven’t.