EVERYONE can claim something glorious about their forefathers, but people are not interested in past events; they want to know about the present.
However, Muslims like to narrate and repeat their glorious past at the slightest drop of a hat. Indeed, they would continue to repeat the narratives of some five thousand years without intermission as if it happened only yesterday.
It is true that Islamic science and art were the forerunners of the present. However, today, Muslims are looked upon as a backward society.
Why did Muslims abandon or discontinue their success? Many believe this is because the present generation of Muslims do not follow the true teachings of Islam.
Who are Muslims of the present day who follow diligently the true teachings of Islam? Surely, those crowned "murshidul, mufti and grand mufti" are people who follow the teachings. However, have they produced anything of scientific worth?
The defeat of Islam in science started in the days of Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Khaldun. It was in the 11th century, where an Islamic scholar named Al-Ghazali started condemning the three philosophers who drew from the intellectual well of the ancient Greeks: Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates and Socrates.
Al-Ghazali claimed that it was such knowledge which led the Jews and Christians astray.
He also said they had confused the people by their studies and that they denied the sanctity of the holy Quran, which promises 72 hours in paradise. The word confused, or mengelirukan in Bahasa Malaysia, is being echoed by the religious pundits of the present day.
The three philosophers could have been convicted as unbelievers, if one were to read Al-Ghazali's Incoherence of the Philosophers.
Another Muslim from Italy, Ibn Rushd, or Averroes, tried to defend the works of Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina by penning Incoherence of the Incoherence.
He explained how mathematics and their theorems demonstrated without conjecture, as against metaphysics, which is outside objective experience.
Ibn Rushd's book was greatly read by the people in the West, and is considered a massive contribution to the sciences.
However, Muslims who are proud of their past have read neither book, either by Al-Ghazali or Averroes. Perhaps, that is why, after Ibn Rushd, Islam produced no more great philosophers.
Andullah Sani Ismail, Tanah Merah, Kelantan
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