The Express Tribune:

KARACHI: Curiosity and inquisitiveness were the traits which earned earlier Muslim scientists their rightful place in the development of science and these are the two qualities which are missing today. Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy shared these views on Tuesday evening while speaking on “Science in Islam: Past, Present and Future” at the Aga Khan University.

The development of science cannot be attributed to one person or a part of the world – it is the collective effort of multiple civilizations over thousands of years, said Hoodbhoy. Similarly, the Islamic civilization did not only utilise the great corpus of knowledge that the Greeks passed on to the European civilisation, but also made its mark through invaluable contributions.

There is not a shadow of doubt about the enormous contributions made by Muslim scientists between the ninth and 13th centuries, he added. “There was a time when the role of Muslims in the filed of science was not recognised in the West and there were only a few names which gained recognition even till the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Belgian chemist and historian George Sarton,” said Hoodbhoy, adding that Sarton, who developed the history of science as an academic discipline, authored five volumes on the subject and dedicated the first one and a half to seminal contributions of Muslim scientists.

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