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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 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
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/focuson/religion/
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