Wanted a catchy title so people would actually click on this thread :o i dunno if the title relates to the article, but - in a way it does. This is a political and cultural issue as well.
This is why i keep harping about how our own divisions are eating us up from the inside. There is no external entity we may blame for our own current condition. i know everyone is going to disagree with me [wow what else is new] but i think this article is presented extremely well. At the altar of sectarianism, our own extremism & probably desire for ‘modernity’, we’ve sacrificed one of Islam’s most fundamental principles - to seek out knowledge constantly. It is not for nothing that the first Revealed Word of the Quran was “Iqra”.
Just posting excerpts.
How times have changed, Syed Amir, DAWN, 8 February 2004
The Abbasid Caliph Al Mamun, a scholar and poet with a great passion for learning and knowledge, founded the House of Wisdom in Baghdad in 830AD. The institute was devoted to accumulation of new knowledge, especially through translation of books from foreign languages, notably, Greek, Sanskrit and Latin, and employing hundreds of linguists and researchers. Numerous books, including Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Theology, indeed the entire Aristotelian essays as well as Galen’s vast collection of medical treatises, were translated into Arabic during that period.
This vigorous pursuit of knowledge and scholarship lasted for many centuries. Then, a progressive and slow decline ensued. According to the Arab Human Development (AHD) Report 2002, on an average, only about 300 books are translated in the entire Arab world annually, representing one-fifth of those translated in just one European country, Greece. **It is estimated that since the reign of Caliph Al Mamun, more than a millennium ago, a mere 100,000 books have been translated into Arabic from other languages.
Today, Spain alone translates about this many books in a year.** In the AHD report, Arab intellectuals lament that their countries collectively publish less than one per cent of all books produced in the world, even though they have five per cent of the population. While the Internet has become such a vital instrument of learning, only 1.6 per cent of the Arab population has access to it.
…] The most important deficiency identified by the authors of the report was the lack of political freedom and absence of democratic and stable political institutions in their countries. This in turn retards freedom of thought and expression and the birth and progression of innovative ideas in the areas of science, literature and arts. The Arab/Muslim world has yet to develop a sound education system. Emphasizing the critical need for acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, the panel noted that investment on research in their home countries was less than 0.5 per cent of the GDP, while comparable expenditure in Japan was about 2.9 per cent. Not surprisingly, nearly half of all educated young people in the Arab/Muslim world yearn to migrate to western countries.
…] The AHD report has made a major impact on the minds of the Arab/Muslim intelligentsia since it has, for the first time, focused on major flaws in our own social and political systems, rather than blaming others for our deficiencies and misfortunes. Clearly, until these problems are addressed, Arab/ Muslim countries have no hope of successfully competing with Western societies and achieving prosperity and social justice for their people. Its conclusions and observations are unlikely to be universally popular, however. Extremists have already chosen a different course, that of terrorism and violence, as a means of solving momentous problems. If pursued, their policies are only likely to condemn our societies to a state of perpetual backwardness and unceasing conflict with others who are technologically far superior than us.
The 12th-century Jewish-Spanish traveller, Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Baghdad, has chronicled his impressions as follows: “The Caliph has built on the banks of Euphrates a hospital consisting of blocks of houses and hospices for the poor who come to be healed. Every sick man who comes in is maintained at the Caliph’s expense and is medically treated. Money is given to those who have stayed in the hospital on their return home.”
People in most Western countries today would envy the social welfare system prevailing a thousand years ago in the waning years of the Abbasid Caliphate. How times have changed!
Very funny.
Maybe you misread, Abdali bhai. i said “where have all the good men gone” 
amazing
