Bombs, Missiles and Pakistani Science

``.....Thirdly, and lastly, a nation`s scientific level is estimated by the quality of science taught in its educational institutions, and the extent to which scientific thinking is part of the general public consciousness. It is not necessary to say very much in this regard. Even our leaders admit that the country`s schools, colleges, and universities are in shambles. An internationally administered test in 1983 established that 6th grade Japanese students performed better in physics and mathematics than 11th grade Pakistani students. And with creeping Talibanization, the dawn of scientific enlightenment among the masses recedes daily. Pakistan fails the third criterion as well. ....``


I totally disagree maybe you don`t really know the quality that is taught in pakistani uniersities, Pakistani student are far more better in manipiulation mathmaticcal expression that Japanese who by far have no damed knowledge of biology and human scince except that there educational system emphasis mainly on technical side not theory. A japanese or any nationalities student can`t write a proper quality thesis than Pakistani students. the only problem is Our current education system, remember students learn what system allows them to learn. Our so called government can easily pionts out and criticize students and teachers but they themselves does not change or improved our education system which leaves us (students & teachers) with a black spot. If we were to have left using british board and improved our education system with a more technical side then we could have scientist and engineer`s in quantity

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Dear Dr Hoodhboy,
In one of your interviews with Dawn `Magazine` you said something to the effect that these days a country doesn`t really require much expertise to become a nuclear power... ``all you need is money``.

Keeping those words in mind, exactly WHY is our Government acting so pompously, and may I add, irresponsibly? They attribute it to the fact that `Our Nuclear Weapons are for defence only...``. Surely there must be more to it than that?

Any comments on this?

Nayyara Rahman

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Dear Pervez: AA..

You are bound to have a sharp memory--and this is

nostalgia. Of course, your name has become almost a household word, at least among somewhat

educated, open-minded households!

It was in 1974 I met you and your entire family--in Karachi, when your parents took me for dinner at the Karachi Gymkhana. You were perhaps in high-school or college and Naseem was also in high-school/college. Samir and I were connected at Brown Univ. in 1964-65 and have known each other since, though lost touch recently. At his calling, I was fortunate to have visited all of you in Karachi in 1974. Do you recall?

Of course, you are now an internationally-known scholar--and scholar of multidimensional talents.

Not long ago I obtained a copy of your Islam and Science--provocative, to-the-point, and often I quote you among friends here and there. And your other inspiring discourses on various issues.

You are indeed making your mark in the Islamic civilization, indeed, the human civilization, I should say.

Where are Samir/Khatoon these days? I saw him briefly in Karachi in 1998--then lost touch. Occasionally I hear about him and the family from our mutual friend Riaz (Boston Univ.)--perhaps you have known him too. Last I heard Samir was in some senior capacity with Hamdard Foundation?

Would you have his e-mail?

Again, if you recall, I am now almost in the twilight zone of my career--most of the years at the University of Idaho, as faculty/dept.chair, etc. Lately, I have been publishing things on medieval Islamic socio-economic thought and its links with Latin-European Renaissance--there is so much ignorance in the West on such linkages.

All good wishes and salams for you and your loved ones....

Ghazi

(S.M. Ghazanfar

Professor of Economics

University of Idaho

Moscow, Idaho 83843

e-mail: ghazi@uidaho.edu

Phone 208-882-7619 (H)

208-885-7144(Office)

Can Islam and science co-exist?



Indiana U. visiting prof from Pakistan: Can Islam and science co-exist?

Updated 12:00 PM ET October 25, 2000

By Kalpana Ramgopal

Indiana Daily Student

Indiana U.

(U-WIRE) BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- How would a scientist and teacher react if he were asked to teach that oxygen and hydrogen fused to form water by the will of God, and not because of a chemical reaction?

Since Friday, Professor Parvez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor from Pakistan`s Quaid-e-Azam University, has been telling Indiana University students about the Muslim nation`s efforts to ``Islamize every form of knowledge.`` He is concerned that pervasive Muslim fundamentalists` interpretations of science might not be able to coexist with modern science.

He also addressed the risks of an accidental nuclear war, Pakistan`s relations with its neighbors and the condition of education in Pakistan.

Hoodbhoy said he believes these issues are of importance because ``Muslims constitute about a fifth of humanity. Also, the issue of Islam and science is of importance not only to the future of Muslims but to everyone.``

As an insider -- Muslim by birth and a physics professor in Pakistan -- he has been expressing concerns about the inability and unwillingness of Islamic countries to develop science and a scientific culture.

``To me, science is not just about technology. Science also brings with it a very particular world view. Acceptance of science and rationality implies that a society accepts laws that are made by humans for humans, instead of following some version of divine law interpreted by clerics,`` Hoodbhoy said.

Noretta Koertge, professor emeritus of history and philosophy of science, said one of the most interesting aspects of the history of science is the relationship between science and religion.

``It is a question science educators in America have to deal with -- creation science in the classroom,`` Koertge said.

Koertge planned Hoodbhoy`s lecture, ``Can Islam and Science Co-Exist.``

Hoodbhoy said he never thought about society or the welfare of others when he went to MIT from an elitist school in Pakistan in 1969.

``You only thought about your own personal advancement,`` he said.

From 1969 to 1973, in the midst of the Vietnam War, he was an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Many groups on the campus actively protested MIT`s involvement with the war.

``What bowled me over was seeing the student community up in revolt against their own government, whom they saw fighting an unjust and cruel war,`` Hoodbhoy said. ``I never thought that the people of a country could rise up against their own government.``

He also saw years of war between East and West Pakistan, and Hoodbhoy said the atrocities committed closer to home forced him to look within and join political demonstrations on campus. Hoodbhoy said these began his early years as a committed Marxist.

At MIT he fell in love with physics and ``saw it as a window into the marvelous world of nature.``

Recognizing the futility of protesting the situation in Pakistan from America, he decided to return to Pakistan. At home he worked with peasants and workers for two years while teaching at Islamabad University.

Hoodbhoy returned to MIT in 1975, received his doctorate degree in nuclear physics and returned to Pakistan in 1978. He has since been a professor at Quaid-e-Azam University and has been involved in social causes.

``Initially I worked at bringing justice for the poor. In time the focus shifted to fighting against nuclear weapons and militarism and fighting for democracy and education,`` Hoodbhoy said. ``Educating people about sciences occupies most of my time these days.``

Koerteg said she was struck by his commitment to his country and science.

``As an MIT-trained physicist who has published and continues to publish extensively in Physics Review and other top-ranked journals, he could obviously find a very comfortable position outside of Pakistan,`` Koerteg said. ``Yet it is very clear that he believes his mission is to contribute to science education in Pakistan, to try to influence public policy there in a way that will permit people to have `cultural pride`...``

Hoodbhoy has been outspoken in his distaste for Pakistan`s acquisition of nuclear weapons. He said the country became involved in the nuclear race after India began to build atomic weapons.

``While initially Pakistan was driven to possess nuclear weapons, it now is very happy with it and under no circumstances will give it up,`` Hoodbhoy said.

Senior Hilal Ahmad, who is from Pakistan, said Monday`s discussion gave him a chance to talk with one of his country`s leading thinkers.

``Dr. Hoodbhoy spoke about the likelihood of a war between Pakistan and her eastern neighbor, India, stating that such a war would most likely occur because of a miscalculation by the parties involved, leading to a war that neither side really wanted, and where nuclear weapons would almost certainly be used.`` said Ahmad, treasurer of the Pakistani Student Association.

Hoodbhoy also addressed science education.

``Today, out of 48 Muslim countries, not one can be called scientifically developed in the sense of Western Europe, Japan or even India, and that less than 1 percent of names in science journals are Muslim,`` he said.

Hoodbhoy said that during the last 700 years, not one invention has been attributed to Muslims. He said that`s a problem that has resulted in a ``massive importation of Western technology, ideas and the fruits of science, but science itself.``

Hoodbhoy said he believes the Muslims` adherence to traditional values has worked to their disadvantage. He said the Palestinians are getting a ``raw deal`` in the Israel-Palestine issue because they are a traditional society.

``No one cares because it is a traditional society versus a modern society,`` he said.

But he was quick to point out that Muslim society has lost out both because of imperialism and colonialism, as well as the cruelties it has inflicted upon itself.

As examples, he mentioned the Taliban`s treatment of women and the growth of violent religious sectarian movements in Muslim countries.

Hoodbhoy said he does not claim to have the answer to whether science and Islam are compatible because ``there does not exist a universally acceptable definition of `Muslim.```

While the physicist might seem pessimistic, he is far from it.

Though he looks at himself as a ``very ineffective reformist,`` he said he does not give himself ``an `F``` because he keeps trying.

He said not all is lost with Islamic countries.

``Most Muslim countries have people who understand the need for science and modernity,`` Hoodbhoy said. ``The revival of science in Islam is a process that will ultimately gain strength. The process is slow because Islamic culture advocates authoritarianism and is disinclined toward change.``

But Hoodbhoy said he sees ``an opportunity for cultural subversion through science. A weapon that not only can be used but must be used.``

Everyone knows that Shahbuddin Ghauri was an invader of India. He killed millions of people( Both Hindus and Muslims), plundered India, destroyed temples and mosques. Yet when India named it surface to earth missile `Prithvi` (Prithvi means `Earth` in Hindi) , Pakistani politicians tried to name their missile `Ghauri` in honor of the Muslim invader who defeated the Hindu king Prithviraj Chauhan. We have lost sight of the fact that not all of the `great Muslim heroes` were actually so.

Tomorrow we would see barbarous Chengez Khan turned into a Muslim super hero. Most of the Muslim rulers we consider ``heroes`` behaved abominably by ordering the slaughter of an embassy numbering some three hundred - most of them Muslims and also Hindus.

Those rulers who defeated the Hindus are portrayed as heroes and their achievements are glorified and admired such as Muhammad bin Qasim, Mahmud of Ghazni, and Shahabuddin Ghauri. Among the Mughal emperors, Aurangzeb is preferred to secular Akbar.

This is not only outright ignorance, but an ignorance born out of fifty three years of misconstrued history. Successive governments and bureaucrats with vested interests unaware of the fact that history has no religion, but that all religions have a history have attempted to convert the history of the Indian subcontinent to Islam. Consequently, for most Muslims in Pakistan (and perhaps even in India) any personage with an Arabic or Persian name is a supposed Islamic hero. For most ignorant folks it does not matter how disreputable that person may have been -- only the name suffices.

The History taught in Pakistan is so distorted. The view among the decision makers is that Pakistan`s history should begin from the Arab invasion of Sindh (A.D. 711) in order to give it an Islamic character. Ancient history when most Muslims in India were Hindus, prior to the Arab invasion, should be set aside, as it is not part of the Islamic history.

The process of Islamization and related ideologies have changed the approach to history as well as archaeology. All Indians and Hindus are treated as villians and Muslims heroes. Pakistan does not have any good role model, so it tries to create role Models of any Muslim. What has this produced, an entire generation of ignorant Pakistanis who are unaware of real history, but have one thing in common ie. ``Indians and Hindus are our enemies``.

Re: Bombs, missiles and Pakistan

Just want to point out that India has not only has the N-bomb and missiles, but also has a very successful civilian space program. India is already one of the major commercial suppliers of remote sensing data. India is also trying to break into the commercial launching business, where India potentially enjoys a great cost advantage over the competition. Incidentally, the cost of the civilian program from 1965-1994 totalled something like the cost of a few Boeing jumbo jets on the commercial market.

-arun gupta

In my mind the primary goal of the country at this time is economic development. Increasing scientific education is not the primary goal though this could be a useful strategy to achieve the primary goal. In the first half of the Western Industrial revolution and for the large part in the East Asian ``miracle`` science has not played the primary role. Rather it has been engineers and technicians who were able to repeat and improve on Western production processes. Very similar to what the Kahuta project did. In the early nineties, the Ministry of Science and Technology sent hundreds of people abroad at enormous cost for PhD and MSc. The majority of these people were either unemployed in their vocations on their return or underemployed. The educated unemployed in Sindh are thought to be a major factor behind lawlessness. The key thought which emerges from all this is that education has to be normative i.e. goal oriented. We need to train our people in the skills which local and world markets demand. In my field, computer software, what that means is training people in ecommerce or Lotus Domino or Oracle rather than having them conduct scientific research on improving the relational data model or in discovering a new language. A cash strapped country such as ours obviously needs to be very careful in where it spends its money. And money needs to be spent where it can generate more money and thus start a snowball affect. The other focus needs to be on how to make business/industrial processes more efficient. In the case of software this means, higher bandwidth communication, venture capital funds, and business training in management and marketing.

I read Hoodbhoy`s paper and was thoroughly confused on some issues.The author put forth a thesis in his paper that production of the nuclear

bomb by Pakistan, although not a mean feat in

itself, did not contribute to the development of

scientific education in Pakistan or was not relevant to science. However, the objectives of

making the bomb did not include such onsiderations

in the agenda; the purpose of the project was entirely different. The bomb was made to secure national defense and that objective has been accomplished, I believe. Another issue that the author mentioned was that the production of the bomb did not require any original ideas in science

and technology; these ideas are at least 50 years old. So what? One should remember that the bomb project was not a `scientific research project`. The bomb was produced for national defence easons. The correlation between the bomb project and ``Pakistani science`` is unfortunate; the two are not related. If the bomb did not do much to develop any scientific research or contribute to science education in Pakistan, it did not depress such activities either. Science education in Pakistan continues to be as bad as it was 50 years back. It is not for want of money. One good thing that the `explosions` did was that they hit the common man in the street as hard as nothing before and made him think and believe that Pakistan needs science and technology. Science and technology are needed for national survival.

Another point that may have been implied in the paper is that the money that was spent on the bomb project could probably have been more usefully spent on science education and research. There is no dearth of money in Pakistan. The money spent on the bomb was usefully spent otherwise it would have gone to line the private pockets of influential corrupt Pakistanis. Discussing the rampant corruption in Pakistan, Ghazali (1) states ``on April 20, 1994, giving details about the payments made by Yunus Habib (Chief Executive of Mehran Bank) to generals, politicians, and political parties, Interior Minister, General Nasirullah Babar, told the National Assembly that the main beneficiary of his largesse was former army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg who received Rs.140 millions. Others who were named included: Jam Sadiq Ali (Rs. 70 millions from Habib Bank and Rs. 150 millions from Mehran Bank); MQM`s Altaf Hussein (Rs. 20 millions);.....;Nawaz Sharif (Rs. 6 millions);Chief Minister of Sindh, Muzaffar Hussein Shah through his secretary (Rs. 13 millions);MQM`s Haqiqi(Rs. 5 millions); former Sports Minister, Ajmal Khan (Rs. 3.5 millions); Liaquat Jatoi (Rs. 1 million); Dost Mohammad Faizi (Rs. 1 million); and Jam Haider (Rs. 2 million).``

Another uncomfortable impression that I gathered after reading the paper was that engineers` contributions, according to the author, are somehow inferior to those of the scientists. According to him ``making bombs and missiles of the type Pakistan and India possess is now the work of engineers and no longer that of scientists``. As if the first bomb that the U.S. produced was without any assistance from the engineers. Is Hoodbhoy implying that the first atomic bomb was the handiwork of the scientists alone? Are`nt we forgetting one important fact? The Manhattan Project was spearheaded by an engineer. What was Leslie Groves who was the chief executive of the Manhattan Project? Yes sir: He was a U.S. Army Engineer. Score of Nobel Laureates, phyisicists, chemists, mathematicians and others, worked under him. According to William Lawren (2), ``He (Groves) had worked with scientists before, and although he did not deny their intelligence and capability, he felt that they tended to be impractical. Instead of sticking with a perfectly good design and seeing it through, they were forever tinkering with it, forever improving it, forever drifting off on interesting but not quite-relevant tangents``. The success of Manhattan Project owed itself to team work and the leadership of a driven and obsessed engineer.

A developing society like Pakistan, and the developed countries as well, needs all kinds of skilled professionals. It needs engineers of all kinds, technicians, technologists, scientists, medical doctors, health scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, liberal artists, writers, poets,.... you name it. Engineering education in Pakistan is as miserable as of science and of liberal arts. There should be room for intellectuals as well as down to earth practical professionals. A scociety can not develop in vaccum. You need engineers to build dams and hydro-electric and thermal power plants, to build roads and bridges, railways, automobiles, aeroplanes and air ports. You need imaginative technologists to develop new technologies; you need poets and painters; you need theoretical and experimental physicists and chemists, so on and so forth. True Dr Qadir Khan is not a nuclear physicist but he himself does not claim to be one. His being a metallurgical engineer in no way detract anything from his monumental feat of producing the bomb for which he was hired in the first place. And you know what? A common citizen does`nt give two hoots if he is only a metallurgical engineer and not a nuclear physicist. Labelling professionals by the degrees that they received in schools and colleges may many a time be fallacious, although convenient. How would you label Michael Faraday, the greatest scientist of his time? He did not have much of formal education. Please try not to misunderstand me; I am not implying that Dr Khan is some kind of a Farady. He is a metallurgical engineer and an excellent one too. I do not know the man personally but he may have published some research papers also in his own specialized field.

References:

1. Abdus Sattar Ghazali, ``Islamic Pakistan: Illusions and Reality``, National Book Club, Islamabad, Chapter XI, p. 22 of 28.

2. William Lawren, ``The General and the Bomb``, Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1988, p. 25.



Mohammad A. Gill

Re: Noor

[``...personal jib...deserved...``]

I wish you had not seen it fit to get personal. The one thing that impedes meaningful discourse is the unimpeded expression of ``personal frustration`` with other InterActors. Why don`t we simply `be and let be`.

BTW, I am just as guilty as the next person of doing what I am hoping others don`t. So next time I step out of line please throw a virtual rotten tomatoe in my face. :)

...SR

Oh..another thing..

Saad Shafqat`s frustration comes from Dr. Hoodbhoy`s choice not to interact with people here. Why in the world should he and why should he care what Saad Shafqat thinks?

Noor

Saad Shafqat wrote:

``I think you are obliged to do something more substantial for Pakistan than just complain. ``

I don`t think Dr. Hoodbhoy has the time to answer to this ridiculous admonishment/accusation. I am amazed at Mr.Shafqat`s gall in writing this. Dr. Hoodbhoy does other things besides writing on Chowk. He has done alot for Pakistan, more than his fair share for Pakistan. Difference is that he doesn`t go about advertising his work on Chowk. The last thing he needs to do is answering to armchair intellectuals who think they can change pakistan from their offices in Boston or New York.

Yes this is a stinging personal jibe I am taking and it is quite well-deserved.

Saad Shafqat wrote:

``I think you are obliged to do something more substantial for Pakistan than just complain. ``

I don`t think Dr. Hoodbhoy has the time to answer to this ridiculous admonishment/accusation. I am amazed at Mr.Shafqat`s gall in writing this. Dr. Hoodbhoy does other things besides writing on Chowk. He has done a lot for Pakistan, more than his fair share for Pakistan. Difference is that he doesn`t go about advertising his work on Chowk. The last thing he needs to do is answering to armchair intellectuals who think they can change pakistan from their offices in Boston or New York.

Yes this is a stinging personal jibe I am taking and it is quite well-deserved.

Re: aminai, #32

``The kind of movement we need requires someone who is completely selfless, totally obsessed, eternally optimistic, and, yes, absolutely shameless. In other words, someone like Syed Ahmad Khan, who had no hesitation in doing whatever it took to fulfill his ideal.``

Once again, sir, you said it!

It is most unfortunate for Pakistan that many among the Chowk wahlas, though much like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (who is one of my two heroes, the other one being Jinnah)in their thinking, are very comfortable in their arm-chairs.