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KUALA LUMPUR – Dr Mahathir Mohamad said Muslims, who were once learned in almost every subject, began to stray from the basic tenet of 'reading' around the 15th century when some ulamas ruled they should read to only widen their knowledge of their religion.
"From then on the Muslim scientists, physicians, mathematicians and others stopped their study of these subjects in order to study religion exclusively," the former prime minister said in his blog.
 He said a commentator recently asked "if the Islamic community was so good in science before, why are the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) countries lagging behind in scince and technology?"
Explaining the matter, Mahathir said the early Muslims accepted the message of Allah in the Qur'an enjoining upon Muslims to read (Iqra').
"The verse (the first divine message to be received by Prophet Muhammad - an illiterate man) did not specify, much less limit what Muslims should read.
"There were no books on Islam at that time but there were many books on the Hebrew and the Christian religions.
Thirst for knowledge
"There were also many books or tracts on Greek science and philosophy as well as Indian mathematics.
"The early Muslims read and eventually translated all the writings of the Greeks, the Indians and others. Obviously they had to learn these languages first. Then they followed up by doing their own research.
"And so, the early Muslims were learned in the subjects pioneered by these other races and this added to the body of knowledge they had acquired, " he said.
Mahathir, who was in his last lap as prime minister when Malaysia was chairing the OIC, said the Europeans were wallowing in the superstitions of the Dark Ages despite having embraced Christianity.
"The superior civilisation of the Muslims overwhelmed the Europeans so that Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Greece and much of eastern Europe fell under Muslim rule.
Students of an Islamic college ... learning more than religion to take on the world
"But around the 15th century of the Christian era, fatwas were made by Muslim ulamas that Iqra' (the command to read) was intended for reading and studying religion only," adding that the Europeans, on the other hand, decided to acquire the knowledge of the Muslims in the different subjects, including those of the Greeks.
Mahathir said the Christian priests began to learn Arabic and were able to gain access to the great libraries of Cordoba, Baghdad and elsewhere.
Europeans emerged from Dark Ages
"They translated the works of Muslim scholars and scientists into Latin and then into other European languages," he added, pointing out that when the Muslims began to reject non-religious knowledge their civilisation began to regress.
The Europeans, after acquiring the knowledge of the Muslims, started to emerge from the Dark Ages and built the civilisation that we see today, he said.
It is unfortunate, said Mahathir, that Muslim historians seemed not to have noticed the significance of the 15th century fatwas and Muslims today seemed to be also unwilling to connect the decline of their civilisation with the neglect of non-religious knowledge.
European historians, he said, admit that their emergence from the Dark Ages - their renaissance - coincided with their study of the Islamic civilsation and origins. — Malaysian Mirror.
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