VIEW: The Nobel and Muslims —Saleem H Ali

According to the director of the UN’s Human Development Report, Kevin Watkins, Bangladesh has seen child mortality falling at an annual rate 50 percent higher than India and in 2006 the child survival rate is better in Bangladesh than in either India or PakistanWhile many Islamic countries claim to have been victimised by the “war on terror”, it is interesting to note that since September 11, 2001, three of the six individual Nobel peace laureates have been Muslims. Their area of recognition has spanned from human rights activism (Shirin Ebadi, 2003) to nuclear vigilance (Muhammad ElBaradei, 2005) to micro-credit entrepreneurship (Muhammad Yunus, 2006).What is perhaps even more astonishing is that in the 106-year history of the Nobel peace prize there are only two other Muslims who have been so honoured. Anwar Saadat (1978) and Yassir Arafat shared the prize with Israeli leaders for highly variable and controversial contributions to building peace in the Middle East.Out of more than five hundred Nobel laureates in the sciences, only two have been of Muslim lineage. Pakistan can claim one of them: Abdus Salam, who shared the prize in physics in 1979, and memorably wore a shervani and turban to the award ceremony in Sweden. However, as a member of the Ahmadiya community, he was regrettably spurned at home as a non-Muslim. The other Muslim science laureate is Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian-American chemist based at the California Institute of Technology who received the prize for chemistry in 1999.The reason for the paucity of Muslim laureates in the sciences is perhaps the relative intellectual inertia in the educational institutions in many Muslim countries. There is a tendency to atavistically celebrate the accomplishments of tenth-century Muslim mathematicians, while investing little in developing contemporary educational capacity. Far too often we hear from imams about the etymology of algebra coming from Arabic and the pharmaceutical accomplishments of Avicenna but do we ask why more of such great scholars have not been seen for a thousand years in Islamic countries?Those Muslims who are educated and proceed to develop successful professional careers are often sanguine with a comfortable job but would rather not invest in cutting-edge creativity. An interesting example is the medical profession in which many Muslims, and indeed Pakistani Muslims, have excelled considerably. However, most of these brilliant doctors are focused on making money in clinical practice rather than in creative research which would lead to laurels such as the Nobel prize. There is cultural complacence that leads to a mindset where success is marked by simply making a good living for the family, contributing some earnings to charity and then living a lavish life.As for the recent Muslim peace laureates what is even more striking is that many Muslims have rejected their efforts and refused to accept them as role models, labelling them instead as stooges of the West.I was amazed at the reaction of one Canadian Muslim professor to the Nobel Prize awarded to Muhammad Yunus this year. There was spiteful criticism of Dr Yunus as a narcissist who was charging the destitute exorbitant un-Islamic interest rates. As with Shirin Ebadi and Muhammad ElBaradei, many Muslims also consider Dr Yunus a “stooge of the West”.While there are some valid critiques of the Grameen Bank model in Bangladesh, it is unfortunate that any novel idea has to be met with such contrarian zeal with few alternative solutions. The overall picture is fairly clear: Bangladesh is at least showing strongly positive signs of development, as measured by indicators developed by Pakistan’s own celebrated economist, the late Mahbub-ul-Haq (who may well have become the first Muslim to win the Nobel Prize in economics had he lived long enough).According to the director of the UN’s Human Development Report, Kevin Watkins, Bangladesh has seen child mortality falling at an annual rate 50 percent higher than India and in 2006 the child survival rate is better in Bangladesh than in either India or Pakistan. This is especially remarkable for a country that has all natural odds against it with annual floods, cyclones and a capricious agricultural climate.Let us now turn to this year’s other Muslim Nobel laureate, Orhan Pamuk of Turkey who won the Nobel Prize for literature. The late Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz is the only other Muslim writer to have won this prize. Both of these writers have been known to marginalizs their Islamic identity at various times, and perhaps the literature prize mirrors the peace prize in its political message. Just as Gandhi was denied the peace prize despite being an inspiration to so many later laureates, some Muslim writers may claim a measure of discrimination here, contending that only a certain liberal elite is even considered seriously. In the case of Mr Pamuk, one Turkish writer commented in the Wall Street Journal that he “has not taught anyone anything they didn’t already know but has made precisely the right noises that the progressive arbiters of taste in Europe like to hear”.Alfred Nobel, the man who perfected the alchemy of dynamite, could scarcely have imagined how momentous his legacy would be for times to come. Every autumn we await the announcements from Scandinavia about this most coveted of international honours. As the pantheon of laureates grows larger and more diverse, the Islamic contribution to this prize remains relatively small. This is a time for introspection among Muslims and non-Muslims alike regarding the means and merits of such rewards, and how best to use them as incentives for improving the human condition.

Dr Saleem H Ali is associate professor of environmental planning and conflict resolution at the University of Vermont and can be reached at saleem@alum.mit.edu