Khaled Ahmed: New coercive order spreading over Muslim society is not political, but intellectual

By Dilip -
Professor Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, who teaches physics and math at Lahore’s Forman Christian University, has been told that his contract will not be renewed in 2021. In the 
same week, the Punjab governor announced that all universities of the province would be required to teach the Holy Quran as a compulsory subject.

Hoodbhoy holds a PhD in nuclear physics and he objects to acts of state and society against reason. His book, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, explains the source of his trouble with the ideological state of Pakistan. It is not that he hates religion — he objects to acts of irrationality in the name of religion. The two scientists he most admires, S Ramanujan and Abdus Salam, were deeply religious.


He protested, however, when the Governor of Punjab Salmaan Taseer was murdered by his police guard when he defended a Christian woman accused of insulting the Holy Prophet under Pakistan’s Anti-Blasphemy law. Living under General Zia-ul Haq’s Islamic martial law, he got put off by a 1987 conference on “scientific miracles” in which Muslim scientists mixed religious miracle with scientific discovery. Pakistani scientists, encouraged by a funding of Rs 66 lakh (half of which was provided by Saudi Arabia), talked rubbish about science and demeaned the divine writ of the Quran... read more:
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/pakistan-religion-pervez-amirali-hoodbhoy-science-6467125

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