“Two-thirds of all the stars, which have names, have Arabic names”.
This came as a big surprise to me when I watched a video forwarded to me, by my office colleague.
In the video was Neil deGrasse Tyson, the narrator of the fascinating TV series ‘Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey’ and the Director of the Hayden Planetarium of New York City.
He was giving the rationale behind the naming of stars, saying that most of the stars were given Arabic names simply because it was the Muslim scientists who had first discovered them. In what was called the ‘Golden Age of Islam’.
According to him, roughly between 800 AD and 1300 AD, the scientific, economic and cultural flourishing in the Islamic world had contributed tremendously to the global body of knowledge.
Scholars and scientists of Cairo, Aleppo and Baghdad were always extending the frontiers of knowledge.
Large libraries and astronomical observatories had become common place at that time, facilitating discourse and debate.
Actually, for a religion like Islam, which marks all its months by the waxing and the waning of the moon, why would it not have wise men, studying the mesmerising night sky?
This week, on 14 May 2016, the world commemorated the ‘International Astronomy Day’.
And while it is fascinating to learn about the contribution of Islam to astronomy, during its golden age, it is saddening to see that its contribution has dwindled in the recent past.
In those glorious days, Islamic scholarship and scientific inquiry was considered to be of such great importance that scores of Greek, Indian and Persian texts were brought, translated into Arabic and preserved, as references, in the libraries of the City of Baghdad.
The growing influence of Arabic at that time, did not desist the Islamic scholars and scientists from embracing knowledge from other cultures and languages.
Sadly, today, if we go by the 2016 “World University Rankings” of Times Higher Education (THE), which gives a listing of the best global universities, we will be shocked at the lack of universities, from the Islamic world.
An article titled “The Kingdom is King” (The Economist, 2 April 2016), says that King Abdulaziz University, of Saudi Arabia, is the only university that has barely made it into the global top 300.
With performance tables judging universities on their core missions - teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook - these rankings give us a picture of academic rigour, or the lack of it, in the region.
Among the problems is not just the low focus on Science and Math, but also on the English language.
Today, whether I like the English language or not, I cannot deny that, globally, English language has become all pervasive. And the enormous knowledge available in this language is completely inaccessible to those refusing to learn the language.
I find it hard to understand why many Middle Eastern and Arabian Gulf governments are not investing more effort into primary education, so that English is taught, alongside Arabic.
In many GCC states, most government schools still give less attention to it.
I admit that the use of Arabic on the Internet, and in the books has definitely increased. But the fact remains that much of the world is available mostly in English.
We know that children are capable of learning three to four languages at the same time. And we should let them try.
Who knows? From reciting “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, some may go on to actually reach the real stars.
This came as a big surprise to me when I watched a video forwarded to me, by my office colleague.
In the video was Neil deGrasse Tyson, the narrator of the fascinating TV series ‘Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey’ and the Director of the Hayden Planetarium of New York City.
He was giving the rationale behind the naming of stars, saying that most of the stars were given Arabic names simply because it was the Muslim scientists who had first discovered them. In what was called the ‘Golden Age of Islam’.
According to him, roughly between 800 AD and 1300 AD, the scientific, economic and cultural flourishing in the Islamic world had contributed tremendously to the global body of knowledge.
Scholars and scientists of Cairo, Aleppo and Baghdad were always extending the frontiers of knowledge.
Large libraries and astronomical observatories had become common place at that time, facilitating discourse and debate.
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| Lunar Eclipse by Al Biruni |
This week, on 14 May 2016, the world commemorated the ‘International Astronomy Day’.
And while it is fascinating to learn about the contribution of Islam to astronomy, during its golden age, it is saddening to see that its contribution has dwindled in the recent past.
In those glorious days, Islamic scholarship and scientific inquiry was considered to be of such great importance that scores of Greek, Indian and Persian texts were brought, translated into Arabic and preserved, as references, in the libraries of the City of Baghdad.
The growing influence of Arabic at that time, did not desist the Islamic scholars and scientists from embracing knowledge from other cultures and languages.
Sadly, today, if we go by the 2016 “World University Rankings” of Times Higher Education (THE), which gives a listing of the best global universities, we will be shocked at the lack of universities, from the Islamic world.
An article titled “The Kingdom is King” (The Economist, 2 April 2016), says that King Abdulaziz University, of Saudi Arabia, is the only university that has barely made it into the global top 300.
With performance tables judging universities on their core missions - teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook - these rankings give us a picture of academic rigour, or the lack of it, in the region.
Among the problems is not just the low focus on Science and Math, but also on the English language.
Today, whether I like the English language or not, I cannot deny that, globally, English language has become all pervasive. And the enormous knowledge available in this language is completely inaccessible to those refusing to learn the language.
I find it hard to understand why many Middle Eastern and Arabian Gulf governments are not investing more effort into primary education, so that English is taught, alongside Arabic.
In many GCC states, most government schools still give less attention to it.
I admit that the use of Arabic on the Internet, and in the books has definitely increased. But the fact remains that much of the world is available mostly in English.
We know that children are capable of learning three to four languages at the same time. And we should let them try.
Who knows? From reciting “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, some may go on to actually reach the real stars.
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