Excerpt:
Today, there is another trait that a leader must possess: The conviction that the pursuit of knowledge through intellectual inquiry is key to progress.
Regrettably, in the Muslim world, this conviction has seemed less important or prominent in recent decades. It was not always thus. For much of its history, Muslim societies have been at the cutting edge of science and innovation.
In mathematics, from a long list dating back to the eighth century, we might mention al-Khwarizimi, whose name gives us the word “algorithm” and whose work introduced algebra (or Al Jabr) to Europe; al-Khayyam, who made many important discoveries in algebra and geometry; and al-Buzjani, a pioneer in trigonometry. In medicine, we can cite Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avecinna, whose Canon of Medicine was for over five centuries among the world’s most influential medical works. And Ibn al-Nafis, who provided the first-ever description of pulmonary circulation.
Ibn Rushd, otherwise known as Averroes in the West, will be familiar to some as the enormously influential commentator on Aristotle. But we could also mention the astronomer al-Biruni, who in the 11th century argued, in a strikingly modern spirit, that observation and mathematics disproved Aristotle’s physics.
More: http://www.akdn.org/content/1227
http://www.aku.edu/convocation/Pakistan/Pages/fr-speech-2013.aspx
Ismailimail 