ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to Aziz Akhmad’s article of October 7 titled “No Nobels for the Muslim world”.
I was listening to a maulvi speaking before a Friday congregation. The topic he had chosen was the source of knowledge or, to be more specific, epistemology. This philosophical concept was simplified by him as he argued that all knowledge has been already revealed to human beings and that it was beyond the intellectual capacity of mortals to add anything more.
By this, he was implying that all that humans could do is to memorise this knowledge. And in a sense, this is what most of us living in the Muslim world are doing — quite efficiently.
The mullah also said that anything beyond Divine knowledge is a skill and does not qualify to be called knowledge. What this worldview suggests is that the Muslims have to concentrate all their intellectual energies on rote learning. Given such an anti-intellectual environment how can we expect to get to the pinnacle of knowledge? Poor Dr Salam; we humiliated you because you won the Noble Prize.
Munir Kakar
Published in The Express Tribune, October 10th, 2011.
