Taj Mahal is not only a symbol for India, but also for Muslim Heritage

By Rafia Zakaria, who is an attorney and human rights activist. She is a columnist for DAWN Pakistan and a regular contributor for Al Jazeera America, Dissent, & Guernica

Dawn: The past achievements of prominent Muslims, particularly Muslim scientists, play an important role in the lives of living ones. In schools all over the Muslim world, the achievements of one or the other long-dead Muslim scientist, Al Farabi or Ibne-Sina, Al Biruni or Ibn Rushd, are taught to schoolchildren who may be vulnerable to believing that science and Islam do not get along.

It is a half-hearted effort, however; for even while the achievements of Muslim scientists of yore are presented, few efforts seem to exist to align the rest of what children learn with the rigour and empiricism associated with scientific knowledge. Earthquakes and floods are routinely pinned to murky calculations of divine retribution and conspiracy theories offered up in place of logical proofs; indeed bygone Muslim scientists would have frowned upon many of the prognostications that are fed to a generally unscientific public on a regular basis.

Against this daunting setting, some living Muslim scientists have taken up the cause of reforming universities in the Muslim world towards the ostensible goal of producing more and better educated Muslim scientists. Last week, the Muslim World Science Initiative released its report on the state of universities in the Muslim world. The task force behind the effort was both diverse and venerable, including a former president of the US National Academy of Sciences and the president of Mauritius, who also happens to be a Muslim female scientist.

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