12-07-2025 12:38
Between 8th to 13th century, also known as the Islamic golden age, Muslims lead the world in science, philosophy, innovation and medicine, a stark contrast from our current state.
Islamic golden age had one defining feature that made us prosper as a nation, we were the center of wisdom. Baghdad was home to bait al hikmah (House of knowledge), a massive library, translation center and academy which acted as a melting pot for scholars of all cultures to share their learnings and build open each others ideas, allowing for great advancements.
Today Muslims are no longer considered as people who pursuit knowledge let alone thought leaders. But it is not that Muslims lack the knowledge or expertise, there are many Muslims involved in research, engineering, medicine and many more fields of study. What is missing is the lack of community and misalignment of purpose.
For the majority of us, the driving factor of obtaining knowledge, skills or expertise is money. Some learn just so they can be hired while some build businesses with the sole purpose of maximizing their wealth. Unlike the Islamic golden age, when learning was led by curiosity and knowledge itself was the goal. Allah has mentioned the importance of knowledge many times in the Quran, for example
“Are those who know equal to those who do not know?” (Az-Zumar, 39:9)
“It is those of His servants who have knowledge who stand in true awe of God” (Surah Fatir, 35:28)
The second issue is the breakdown of Muslims as a community. There is no culture of knowledge sharing amongst ourselves. Money driven learning has left our collective intelligence to be severely fragmented, making it difficult to collaborate and build upon each others expertise to generate breakthroughs in meaningful fields of studies. As individuals we are left to rely upon Non Muslim lead initiatives, companies and researches to find opportunities. This can lead to working or learning in environments which force us to choose between some of our Islamic principles or knowledge. We should not have to choose.
There are steps we can take so Islam is once again synonymous with learning and we can take pride in our current collective achievements, instead of clinging on to claims of glory of the past. Mosques need to be utilized for more than just praying and religious knowledge. They offer an ideal location to share our learnings of our respective fields. This can be in the form of volunteer based TED talks, skills workshops or discussion panels, providing a space for Muslims to learn and build opportunities for each other, without having to rely on Non Muslim events which might require us to sacrifice some of our core Islamic principles. We must pursue knowledge, without sacrificing our principles, money and success will follow.
If we pursue our curiosity, share our learnings with each other and lead our own systems instead of trying to fit in ones which forces us to choose between success and our principle, we can once again revive the Golden age of Islam.