The first question is that can any ideological state be a scientific minded state? The other question arises that can any country progress without being science-loving and objective minded – especially in today’s world? The direct answer is “Never”.

What science loving and objective minded mean? Science is the name of ever-changing realities. In the eyes of science nothing is firm and final. A scientific mind always remains in doubt and suspicion. He questions and enquires about everything that he comes across. It’s not easy to make him believe without proof and evidence. In the world of science even the gods like Aristotle, Newton and Einstein can be denied, if proven wrong. The theories and the laws – given by the super intelligent individuals as a result of their lifelong research – are thrown into the trashcan if a young amateur brings forward a solid denial on the bases of some lab results, mathematical or physical deductions. Now the ultimate destinies of mankind are decided inside science laboratories not inside mosques, churches, synagogues or mandirs!  Pandemics are cured with the efforts of biologists, chemists, pharmacists and other head-down researchers. The invented remedies equally cure the believers and non-believers, without any distinction and discrimination.

Since childhood I have been listening to my elders ridiculing science for being self-denying and self-negating, from time to time. They never understood that this inbuilt self-correction is the strength of science and not the weakness, at all.

On the other hand, ideologies and ideologues are fixed stagnant pools of inflexible mindsets. They are the kind of traditionalists who favor status quo and resist progressive change. Islamists around the world are a typical example of blind followers of a “perfect cum final” and “unchangeable” path. They are the product and proponets of a thought process which does not rely on logical and scientific debates or rational arguments but look for every solution either in different and various theologic interpretations of the sacred scripture, Quran, or the tradition of the Arabian prophet. Any argument which contradicts either Quran or Hadith and Sunnah (the words and the actions of the prophet) is not acceptable, by any means. This kind of thinking was best explained by a famous Pakistani cleric, Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman during an agitated interview on television. Mufti was a grossly favored cleric at official levels in Pakistan – holding important position in the government setup. Mufti Muneeb explicitly said, “WE KEEP SCIENCE AT THE TOE OF OUR SHOES.” Off and on Pakistanis have proved that they really keep science at the toe of their shoes in each and every walk of life. The tragedy is that this medieval thinking is not limited to few people but almost the whole populace of the country firmly believes that when it comes to religion vs science the latter stands no chance! What the West went through in their Dark Ages the Muslim World is going through in 21^st Century!

A frequently presented argument in Pakistan is that Israel which is an emerging technological power has also been an ideological state and their citizens being practicing orthodox Jews.

The marked and clear differences between the basic philosophies that gave birth to Israel and Pakistan are totally ignored while making this comparison. Basically, Judaism is not a missionary religion, and they don’t believe in converting “infidels” into so-called believers through coercion. Historically, Jews have never been belligerent but were always persecuted right from the days of prophet Moses to the times of Third Reich. Whatever belligerent posture Israel adopted was a post-Zionism phenomenon starting in the mid of 20^th Century. The reality is that among all three Abrahamic religions Jews are the original custodians of the values of the houses of Abraham, David, Solomon and all other prophets and they eventually succeeded in developing a value based rational culture among them. They practice Jewish customs, religiously, but not at the cost of science. The grand building of science and philosophy in present times was erected by no one but the Jewish scientists and philosophers who primarily migrated to the new world, the United States of America, after facing holocaust and contributed tremendously to the realms of pure, physical and applied sciences. Therefore, their religious ideology never proved to be any kind of hindrance or irritant in their intellectual growth which is totally contrary to the status of Muslim mindset around the world.

In following articles, I will present some more instances from our sample society where the clergy and the ignorant masses bulldozed science-based concepts, ideas and inventions – to the total detriment of new generation – in the name of Islam. Few blatant ones are how the scientific theories of Evolution were forcefully removed from the textbooks of Biology, how the polio vaccination drives for infants have been aggressively obstructed in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan and how strongly the campaigns for family planning and birth control are failed for so many decades. Today Pakistan and Afghanistan are left as last two countries where polio virus has still not been eradicated while the population explosion in Pakistan has reached to horrendous proportions due to nonexistence of any population control as a matter of policy.