The rise of women in STEM in the Arab world🌍👇

Arab women in STEM are definitely inspiring (contrary to stereotypes and propaganda), and their success stories are good examples to other countries attempting to increase female interest in the field According to UNESCO, 34-57% of STEM graduates in Arab countries are women – a figure much higher than that seen in universities across the US or Europe

Around ten centuries before the invention of the airplane by Wright brothers, Abbas Ibn Firnas, a well-known Muslim scientist and inventor, made the first attempt of flying. Ibn Firnas built a wooden flying machine and used it to jump from a building. He failed in his 1st attempt, but he didn’t lose his hope, and years later, he made a successful flight. This time, he used eagles feathers and silk for his flying machine.

Auguste Comte, held to a theory of history in which societies pass through 3 stages – religious, metaphysical and scientific (or ‘positive’). Comte coined the term ‘sociology’ and he wanted to diminish the social influence of religion and replace it with a new science of society.

https://twitter.com/IslamScienceNet/status/1363747248505556995

Scientists, intellectuals & social scientists expected that the spread of modern science would drive secularisation – that science would be a secularising force. But that simply hasn’t been the case.

On miracles, Stefano Bigliardi has characterised views of modern Muslim scientists as being quite different as follows:

👉Miracles are acceptable in their literal description. They might be controlled by a different set of laws. 👉They are very low probability events that occur extremely rarely, perhaps only once in the universe’s lifetime.
👉Miracles are cited in religious texts figuratively, and are not intended to be true events in a literal sense.
👉A miracle constitutes a “spiritual experience”.

Miracles need to be reconciled as extreme rare and exceptional events with scientific explanations👇 Miracles constitute one of the most contentious issues in the debates of Religion and Science. Miracles are not as fundamental to some religions as to others, but in their direct connection to the more important issue of divine action in the world, they are essential to address.

According to Ibn Sina, miracles must have a physical explanation👇

📸The Physician — Movie, starring Sir Ben Kingsley as #IbnSina. Ibn Sina firmly believed that there are laws of nature which cannot be violated. He believed that all physical phenomena have a known cause – an idea which also characterised his approach to medicine.

Al-Khwarizmi’s map of the Nile, one of the earliest-known maps depicting the Nile (this is also an example of one of the earliest Islamicate maps produced on paper), became a model for depicting the river in nearly every cartographic manuscript for centuries. This map was part of an 11th-century manuscript copy of al-Khwarizmi’s Kitab surat al-‘ard (Book of a picture of the earth) published in English under the title The Oriental Geography of Ebn Hawqal (1800).

Around ten centuries before the invention of the airplane by Wright brothers, Abbas Ibn Firnas, a well-known Muslim scientist and inventor, made the first attempt of flying. Ibn Firnas built a wooden flying machine and used it to jump from a building. He failed in his 1st attempt, but he didn’t lose his hope, and years later, he made a successful flight. This time, he used eagles feathers and silk for his flying machine.

Al-Khwarizmi’s map of the Nile, one of the earliest-known maps depicting the Nile (this is also an example of one of the earliest Islamicate maps produced on paper), became a model for depicting the river in nearly every cartographic manuscript for centuries. This map was part of an 11th-century manuscript copy of al-Khwarizmi’s Kitab surat al-‘ard (Book of a picture of the earth) published in English under the title The Oriental Geography of Ebn Hawqal (1800).

Mustansiriya Madrasah was a medieval era scholarly complex that provided a universal system of higher education🎓. It was established in 1227 C.E and was named after and built by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustansir in Baghdad, Iraq. The Madrasa taught many different subjects, including medicine, math, literature, grammar, philosophy & Islamic religious studies. However, the major focus of education was in Islamic law. It became the most prominent and high-ranking center for Islamic studies in all of Baghdad.

Omar Khayyam is one of the most extraordinary figures in Islamic science, and tales of his mathematical brilliance abound.
🎨Google Doodles celebrated Omar Khayyam’s 971st Birthday. In 1079, Omar Khayyam calculated the length of the year to 365.24219858156 days. That means that he was out by less than the sixth decimal place– fractions of a second – from the figure we have today of 365.242190, derived with the aid of radio telescopes and atomic clocks.

Omar Khayyam is one of the most extraordinary figures in Islamic science, and tales of his mathematical brilliance abound.
🎨Google Doodles celebrated Omar Khayyam’s 971st Birthday. In 1079, Omar Khayyam calculated the length of the year to 365.24219858156 days. That means that he was out by less than the sixth decimal place– fractions of a second – from the figure we have today of 365.242190, derived with the aid of radio telescopes and atomic clocks.

Al-Khwarizmi’s map of the Nile, one of the earliest-known maps depicting the Nile (this is also an example of one of the earliest Islamicate maps produced on paper), became a model for depicting the river in nearly every cartographic manuscript for centuries. This map was part of an 11th-century manuscript copy of al-Khwarizmi’s Kitab surat al-‘ard (Book of a picture of the earth) published in English under the title The Oriental Geography of Ebn Hawqal (1800).

According to Ibn Sina, miracles must have a physical explanation [Thread👇]
📸The Physician — Movie🎥, starring Sir Ben Kingsley as #IbnSina. Ibn Sina firmly believed that there are laws of nature which cannot be violated. He believed that all physical phenomena have a known cause – an idea which also characterised his approach to medicine.

The rise of women in STEM in the Arab world🌍👇
Arab women in STEM are definitely inspiring (contrary to stereotypes and propaganda), and their success stories are good examples to other countries attempting to increase female interest in the field
#WomenInScienceDay According to UNESCO, 34-57% of STEM graduates in Arab countries are women – a figure much higher than that seen in universities across the US or Europe

By the twelfth century, hospitals serving the sick and the poor could be found in nearly every Islamic city.
📸In Egypt, the al-Mansur Qalawun Complex in Cairo includes a hospital, school and mausoleum. It dates from 1284-85. Islamic hospitals were one part of a larger network of charity that included mosques, public kitchens, charitable hotels, and so many other things that allow these hospitals to focus on working with patients.

Muhammad (PBUH): an anticlerical hero of the European Enlightenment
👉Some saw Islam as a pure form of monotheism close to philosophic Deism and the Quran as a rational paean to the Creator.
aeon.co/ideas/muhammad… The US founding father Thomas Jefferson bought a copy of Sale’s translation of the Quran from a bookseller in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1765, which helped him conceive of a philosophical deism that surpassed confessional boundaries.