Today I got told by two Hindus that Muslims have not innovated or created any discoveries or medical breakthroughs in the last 1400 years. Well, one was openly Hindu, the other guy was pretending to be Muslim.
The Hindu user who goes by twitter handle @JhatackMeats told me:
Show me one medicine, medical breakthrough discovered by mzlms. Not in some US or European university
I responded with a list of 12 Muslim Nobel Laureates and another Twitter user GilgameshThePakGod wrote:
Not one is in medical research. 1.8 billion Muslims. Only 2 Nobels on Science. Abdus Salam is considered an Infidel by the majority of Muslims. He then said “Muslims have not produced shit”
So I really think the Nobel thing is a red herring, because you don’t need to win a nobel prize to contribute to human progress and civilization. So I shared a beautiful story of an All-Girl Robotics Team In Afghanistan Works On Low-Cost Ventilator … With Car Parts
and finally his reply:
I am a Muslim. (yeah right buddy) Making ventilators, a technology that is already available does not mean anything. We should accept the truth that Muslims are unable to produce shit.
I call bullshit on that claim. Not just on the “I am Muslim” part but especially on the second part where he claimed that Muslims are unable to produce shit. With very little effort I was able to find not just Muslims, but Muslim women who were able to achieve greatness despite living in a male dominated Muslim societies.
Alia Al Mansoori is a now 18 year old Emirati. In 2017 when she was just 15 years old she won the “Genes in Space” UAE competition, with a proposal to study how exposure to space affects the health of live organisms at cellular level.
Wow. At 15 I was not doing anything close to that. I probably didn’t know what a Gene was at that age. What a bright mind! The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Alia Al Mansoori’s winning Genes in Space experiment docked at ISIS (no, not that ISIS, the International Space Station) on August 2017
On to another woman. Professor Datuk Dr. Asma Ismail is a Malaysian academic and molecular biologist. She is the first female Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia appointed in 2016. Asma made scientific discoveries that led to the attainment of 13 patents and commercialization of a rapid diagnostic test for typhoid which was advocated by WHO.
The next example is Tasneem Zehra Husain, a Pakistani theoretical physicist. She is one of few Pakistani women to obtain a doctorate in physics, and the first Pakistani woman string theorist. She helped establish the LUMS School of Science and Engineering in her hometown Lahore while still doing her post-doc, where she returned as a founding faculty member. So she’s bringing science and education to one of the places in the world where its most needed. She also delivers educational talks to high school students and is a fiction and non-fiction writer.
Now for these three Muslim women, that is an impressive contribution to humanity. Especially Alia who started so young!
I could go on and on, citing example after example of Muslims who have contributed to our world. Not just in science, but in all parts of our world. Architecture, teaching, engineering, art, medicine, religion (Wait, just kidding about the last one). But I wouldn’t convince these “people” who see Muslims as inferior humans.
But the thing is I would not attribute any of this to “Islam”. Yes, these are wonderful examples of human beings, but why should Islam get any credit for this? Islam is a superstitious religion that in many ways holds back progress. At a start, its creation myths go against evolution. And the amount of Muslims that have wasted away their lives in madrassas that could have been potential Einstein’s is saddening to think about. One young man by the name Younas I interviewed on my channel told me that in his small town in Africa, all the kids just memorize Quran. That’s just the expectation. Secular education just isn’t important to them. Do check out his story after. Its quite amazing. Then we add a month of fasting every year where everything else is thrown to the side and religious matters are prioritized. Multiply that by 1400 years, and its not difficult to imagine why a Muslim society could fall behind. Islam also holds back women. Many conservative Muslims are taught that women are not allowed to work, not allowed to mix with men, and are encouraged to stay home. How many female actors, singers, scientists and other contributors have we lost because of this dogma? Many for sure.
That being said, despite of Islam, we have millions of Muslims who have overcome these odds and achieved greatness in this world. Despite their religious beliefs they have managed to leave something behind for humanity. Something that we will benefit from, and if not us, then our kids.
Let us remember, Muslims are not our enemy. Muslims are our fellow human beings who we need to live with on this planet. Our enemy is the fascist supremacist ideology known as Islam. We can be against the religion while still maintaining the rights of our Muslim neighbors.
The people who made these statements have most likely contributed nothing to society, let alone to scientific knowledge.
Typically they ignore their own intellectual failings by pretending to themselves that the accomplishments of people with the same skin colour are a shared accolade – as if the accomplishments are somehow a by-product of their superior genes.
Most discoveries and inventions are build on the knowledge that went before. I look forward to the day that everyone no matter where they are from and what stumbling blocks they believe in can work on improving the lives of everyone through technology.
First research etc, requires democracy, and peace which allows the capitalism to flourish that in turn helps pay for the research.
Democracy and peace.