Our lack of interest in reading is symptomatic of the larger malaise that afflicts us as a people--our apathy to learning and a culture

of knowledge and scientific inquiry. Our hunger of learning and zeal to explore new ideas and new frontiers of knowledge that once drove our ancestors has given way to a crass, disturbing intellectual listlessness. Is it any wonder then we are so way behind the rest of the world? Not a single university from the Muslim world home to 1.6 billion people, a quarter of the worlds total population figures in the top 500 centres of learning. Even as the world progresses and conquers new frontiers of knowledge and ideas by the hour, the Muslims are yet to stir out of their slumber of centuries. This would have been understandable when most of the Muslim world had been under colonial occupation. There was a real crunch of resources too. Today, however, its a vastly different world. Most Muslim countries are doing well economically thanks to their rich natural and financial resources. If petrodollars have transformed the once desolate landscape of the Middle East into the worlds most happening region, things havent been too bad for other Muslim countries like Turkey, Malaysia and even Pakistan. However, growing economic prosperity and development seem to have done little to whet the Muslim worlds appetite for knowledge and learning. The Muslim world either pushes itself on this path to deal with the challenges ahead or commits a collective hara-kiri. After all, it was the Arabs and Muslims who had pioneered the knowledge revolution that changed the world. No history of Western progress will be complete without crediting the critical role Arab scientists and philosophers played in it. As William Dalrymple says: So much that we today value universities, paper, the book, printing were transmitted from East to West via the Islamic world, in most cases entering western Europe in the Middle Ages via Islamic Spain. And where was the first law code drawn up? In Athens or London? Actually, no it was the invention of Hammurabi, in ancient Iraq." There was a time when a burning hunger for knowledge and new ideas consumed the Muslim lands. Governments actively encouraged and supported the quest of knowledge and spirit of scientific inquiry. Muslim lands were home to scores of great universities and centres of learning long before Oxford and Cambridge came into being.