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In an article entitled “What went wrong?” Dr Farrukh Saleem, a freelance writer from Islamabad painted a very bleak picture of the Islamic world showing the Muslims are the poorest, the most illiterate and the most backward people of the world. He wrote:
The combined annual GDP of 57 Muslim countries remains under $2 trillion. America , just by herself, produces goods and services worth $10.4 trillion; China $5.7 trillion, Japan $3.5 trillion and Germany $2.1 trillion. Even India 's GDP is estimated at over $3 trillion (purchasing power parity basis).
Oil rich Saudi Arabia , U.A.E., Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $430 billion; Netherlands alone has a higher annual GDP while Buddhist Thailand produces goods and services worth $429 billion.
Muslims are 22 percent of the world population and produce less than five percent of global GDP. Even more worrying is that the Muslim countries' GDP as a percent of the global GDP is going down over time. The Arabs, it seems, are particularly worse off. According to the United Nations' Arab Development Report: "Half of Arab women cannot read; One in five Arabs live on less than $2 per day; Only 1 percent of the Arab population has a personal computer, and only half of 1 percent use the Internet; Fifteen percent of the Arab workforce is unemployed, and this number could double by 2010; The average growth rate of the per capita income during the preceding 20 years in the Arab world was only one-half of 1 percent per annum, worse than anywhere but sub-Saharan Africa."
The planet's poorest countries include Ethiopia , Sierra Leone , Afghanistan , Cambodia , Somalia , Nigeria , Pakistan and Mozambique . At least six of the poorest of the poor are countries with a Muslim majority.
Conclusion: Muslims of the world are among the poorest of the poor.
Fifty-seven Muslim majority countries have an average of ten universities each for a total of less than 600 universities for 1.4 billion people; India has 8,407 universities, the U.S. has 5,758. From within 1.4 billion Muslims Abdus Salam and Ahmed Zewail are the only two Muslim men who won a Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry (Salam pursued his scientific work in Italy and the UK , Zewail at California Institute of Technology). Dr Salam in his home country is not even considered a Muslim.
Over the past 105 years, 1.4 billion Muslims have produced eight Nobel Laureates while a mere 14 million Jews have produced 167 Nobel Laureates. Of the 1.4 billion Muslims less than 300,000 qualify as 'scientists', and that converts to a ratio of 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The United States of America has 1.1 million scientists (4,099 per million); Japan has 700,000 (5,095 per million).
Fact: Of the 1.4 billion Muslims 800 million are illiterate (6 out of 10 Muslims cannot read). In Christendom, adult literacy rate stands at 78 percent.
Consider, for instance, that Muslims constitute 22 percent of world population with a 1 percent share of Nobel Prizes. Jews constitute 0.23 percent of world population with a 22 percent share of Nobel Prizes.
What really went wrong? Muslims are poor, illiterate and weak. What went wrong? Arriving at the right diagnosis is extremely critical because the prescription depends on it. Consider this:
Here is where I thought he is going to tell it like it is and make it clear that Islam is the cause of it all. But you will be surprised to see what were Dr. Saleem's diagnoses:
Diagnosis 1: Muslims are poor, illiterate and weak because they have 'abandoned the divine heritage of Islam'. Prescription: We must return to our real or imagined past.
Diagnosis 2: Muslims are poor, illiterate and weak because we have refused to change with time.
Keep pace with time -- al Quran ------------------------ What insanity!
Is there any hope for Muslims at all? If this is how an educated Muslim thinks, what hope is there? Are Muslims blind? Can’t this doctor see that the cause of the poverty and backwardness of Muslims is Islam?
If as he says, the way to overcome the misery of Muslims is to become even more Islamic, how can he explain the fact that the countries that are not Islamic at all are better than those that are Islamic? How many brain cells does it take to see that Islam is the cause of it all? How can he explain the fact that the countries that are more Islamic ( Afghanistan , Iran , Pakistan , Bangladesh ) are more backward than those that are less Islamic ( Morocco , Turkey , Qatar )?
At which period in the history, Muslims were prosperous and productive? The only time they were prosperous was when they looted the wealth of other nations. When that loot ended, so did their prosperity.
This is outrageous that an educated man, a doctor to boot, make such poor diagnosis of what went wrong.
The question “what went wrong” is mute. It implies that there was a time that something was right! At what time anything was right in Islam doctor? Islam was wrong from the beginning. Islam is not sick. It is the sickness itself. You can’t cure Islam. You must overcome it and eradicate it.
The cause of the poverty and ignorance of Muslims is Islam. It is the five times prayers, it is the one month fasting, it is the reading of the Quran instead of science, it is the wasting of people's time teaching them the Islamic way of defecation, urination and copulation, and it is observing all those stupid Islamic rituals that has made Muslims backward, lazy and poor. How by doing more of the same Dr. Saleem, do you expect to remedy the problem? This kind of mentality is mind-boggling. Only a Muslim can be so blinded by his faith that cannot see the forest for the trees.
Dr. Saleem, you got it all wrong my man. What past you want us to return to? The past of Islam is all savagery, war and mayhem. Well, Osama Bin Laden and his ilk are trying to go back to that past. Are you with them?
Isn't funny that not even our good doctor is sure that such “glorious” past ever existed? He says we should return to our “imagined” past. In other words go after a fantasy, an illusion, a mirage! I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.
Dr. Saleem’s diagnosis number 2 is even funnier. First he says “Muslims are poor, illiterate and weak because we have refused to change with time.” Fair enough! But then he surprises us and concludes “Keep pace with time -- al Quran”
Can’t you see doctor that this al Quran is the very cause of our backwardness? It is this damn al-Quran that does not let us go forward. What does this book teach us? Hate, and hate and more hate! That is all you learn from this book.
Okay, I take that back. You learn also that there are Jinns all around us watching whatever we do. (Darn! From today I am going to take my showers in my swimming suit; and to change, I will cover myself with a towel, just in case a voyeur gay jinn is sitting in front of me watching.)
It also teaches that the mountains are like pegs, holding the Earth from shaking.
That the sun rises and sets in murky waters
That sperms are generated in the spine
That the first thing created in fetus is the bone and then this bone is covered with flesh.
That there is a winged horsy with a human face that took Muhammad to the heaven.
That Muhammad cleft asunder the Moon.
That the sky is supported by invisible pillars.
That the stars are adornments hanging from the lower heaven while the Moon is above them.
That the “shooting stars” are missiles that Allah and his angels throw at the Jinns when they climb on each others’ shoulders to eavesdrop on the conversation of the “Exalted Assembly”.
That the Earth is spread like a bed.
Oh yeah! All these “scientific facts” and more are in the Quran. The non-Muslims read the Quran and then go and discover and invent new things. I wonder why Muslims who read the Quran more can't do that!
Sir! With all due respect! How much stupidity is enough? The poor Muslims are drowning in the cesspool of Islam and all you can tell them is go deeper? Is this your remedy?
You are mistaken Dr. Saleem. The problem of Muslims is the Quran. To recover they have to leave this book of lies, hate and stupidity. It's this book that is chaining them to the 7th century and does not let them keep pace with the time.
Wake up Sir and help these wretched people out of this cesspool. Enough with self deception! It’s time to face the truth. Islam is the cause of the backwardness of the Muslims. What other proof you need beyond what you yourself have written?
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