Islam's Golden Age

By Dr Farrukh Saleem

Rabbi Shmuel HaNagid, the great Jewish poet and warrior, was appointed
the prime minister of Muslim Spain by the caliph of Cordoba (himself a
successor of General Tariq bin Ziyad). That was 935 years ago. Can the
president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan dare send a non-Muslim to
the prime minister's office?

Sultan Saladin, the twelfth century century Muslim warrior, appointed
Rabbi Moses Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher and surgeon, as his
personal physician. Sultan Saladin went on to rule Egypt, Syria, Yemen
and Iraq.

The four secrets to Islam's Golden Age were tolerance, merit, talent
and freedom to dissent. Based on merit, a Jew was appointed the prime
minister (religious beliefs of a citizen did not matter, talent did).
Other faiths were respected and citizens had the freedom to dissent.

Consider Abd al-Rahman III, caliph of Cordoba. Abd al-Rahman was in
love with books. Muslim Cordoba had 70 libraries. Just how many libraries
have been built by General Mohammed Yahya Khan, General Mohammed
Zia-ul-Haq, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Benazir Bhutto, Mian Nawaz Sharif, Farooq
Ahmed Khan Leghari and General Pervez Musharraf all put together? Abd
al-Rahman's library had 44 volumes in the catalogue for the 400,000 volumes.
A thousand years hence and the National Library of Pakistan has a mere
130,000 books.

A rabbi was made the prime minister a thousand years ago and now we
disown Abdus Salam the only Noble Laureate this county ever produced (Dr
Salam was buried in Rabwah without any official protocol). No wonder the
caliph of Cordoba ruled over Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia
and Libya while we are left with half of what we started out with.

Imagine, some 1200 years ago Jews of Cordoba, Malaga, Granada, Seville
and Toledo had welcomed Muslim conquerors (because they were being
persecuted by the Christians). When Muslims conquered Cordoba, Malaga,
Granada, Seville and Toledo they appointed Jewish administrators. Anyone
who had talent; Jews were appointed top diplomats, royal physicians,
viziers and statesmen. Christian scholars were called in as the caliph's
translators.

Ummayad al-Hakam II, another caliph of Cordoba and another book lover,
first made peace with Christian kingdoms around him and then attracted
scholars -- Muslims, Christians and Jews -- from Asia as well as from
Africa to come to Cordoba and translate books from Latin and Greek into
Arabic (Muslim Saudi Arabia has translated fewer books in the past 50
years than does Spain in a year).

Islam's Golden Age thrived on respect of other faiths, appointments on
merit and love of books. When we respected other religions and loved
books we ruled over North Africa, Nimes (France), Sicily (Italy),
Walachia (Romania), Cypress, Sardinia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Albania, Venice, Hungary, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia,
Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Iran and all
the way to Pakistan.

We no longer respect other religions and hate books (there are 800
million illiterate Muslim men and women in 57 Muslim-majority OIC member
states). As a consequence, Muslims are 22 per cent of humanity but
produce less than five per cent of global GDP.

Arabs now respect other religions the least and hate books the most. No
wonder Arabs are particularly worse off. Take Saudi Arabia: The country
has still not adopted UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Women
are considered 'minors in perpetuity'; No other religion but Islam can
be publicly observed; Shias cannot be represented in Saudi courts.

Furthermore, only one per cent of the Arab population has a personal
computer, and only half of one per cent use the Internet. According to
United Nations' Arab Development Report: "Half of Arab women cannot read;
One in five Arabs lives on less than $2 per day; Fifteen per cent of
the Arab workforce is unemployed, and this number could double by 2010;
The average growth rate of per capita income during the preceding 20
years in the Arab world was only one-half of one per cent per annum, worse
than anywhere but sub-Saharan Africa."

A thousand years ago, we were literate, tolerated other religions and
were strong and prosperous. Now we are illiterate, weak and poor.



The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. Email:
farrukh15@hotmail.com