The knowledge deficit

Some religious leaders in Pakistan8217;s Pashtun tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have also voiced concerns about a 8220;Western-Zionist conspiracy8221; to sterilise the next generation of Muslims as part of what they allege is an 8220;ongoing war against Islam.8221;

Mobile phones and internet, the pervasiveness of which is often cited as a measure of a society8217;s progress and modernity, have become a means of spreading fear in the Muslim world. Text messages, originating from the Pakistani city of Sialkot, recently warned people of a virus if people answered phone calls from certain numbers. The virus would not hurt the phone, the messages said, but would kill the recipient.

The panic caused by the rumours forced the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to issue a denial. Phone companies sent out text messages urging people to be calm. A newspaper rejected the rumour but featured the headline, 8220;Killer Mobile Virus.8221;

A text message widely circulated in an Arab country claimed that trucks carrying a million melons had been smuggled across the country8217;s northern border and the melons were contaminated with the HIV virus. No one paid attention to the fact that the HIV virus cannot be transmitted by eating melons.

The Muslim world has a high rate of illiteracy but ignorance reflected by the readiness to believe unverified claims is not just a function of illiteracy. It is a function of bigotry and fear. Literate Muslims, such as those involved in the text message rumour-mongering, are as vulnerable to ignorant behaviour as illiterate ones.

Conspiracy theories have been popular among Muslims since the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire as a way of explaining the powerlessness of a community that was at one time the world8217;s economic, scientific, political and military leader. The erosion of the leadership position of Muslims coincided with the West8217;s gradual technological ascendancy. Soon after the Ottomans took over Constantinople, Johann Gutenberg printed a Bible using metal plates.

Printing was introduced into the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Sultan Bayazid II 1481-1512 only to be virtually banned for use by Muslims in 1485. In Europe, a full-grown book industry evolved, facilitating wide dissemination of ideas and knowledge. By 1501, more than a thousand printing presses had produced about 35,000 titles with ten million copies. But in the Ottoman Empire, only Christians and Jews used printing technology.

The Persian, Mughal and Ottoman empires controlled vast lands and resources but many important scientific discoveries and inventions since the fifteenth century came about in Europe and not in the Muslim lands. Ignorance is an attitude and the world8217;s Muslims have to analyse, debate and face it before they can deal with it.

The 57 member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference OIC have around 500 universities compared with more than five thousand universities in the United States and more than eight thousand in India. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an 8216;Academic Ranking of World Universities8217;, and none of the universities from Muslim-majority states was included in the top 500.

There is only one university for every three million Muslims and the Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The US has 4,000 scientists per million and Japan has 5,000 per million. The Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development, while the western nations spend around five per cent of GDP on producing knowledge.

The tendency of Muslim masses to accept rumours as fact and the readiness to believe anything that suggests a non-Muslim conspiracy to weaken or undermine the Muslims is the result of the overall feeling of helplessness and decline that permeates the Muslim world.

Most Muslim scholars and leaders try to explain Muslim decline through the prism of the injustices of colonialism. But Muslims are not weak only because they were colonised. They were colonised because they had become weak.

It is time for a discussion of the Ummah8217;s decline in the context of failure to produce and consume knowledge and absorb verifiable facts.

The writer is director of Boston University8217;s Centre for International Relation