History tells us that between 800 and 1100 AD was the Golden Age of Arabic science. Well it isn’t history that I’m getting this from. It’s from Hassan Hassan, a columnist for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, the UAE., He’s also a contributor for The Guardian, Foreign Policy and the Carnegie Endowment. He graduated from the University of Nottingham, the UK, with a Master of Arts in International Relations.

During that period, Hassan says, the Muslim world was the beacon of innovation that triggered Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. But after that time, he tells his readers, Islam turned its back on science. If you’re a Muslim, most likely a devoutly religious one, who is happy about this state of affairs, well that’s your choice. Whose to blame, or to take the credit for that rejection of science? It seems that most people hold Abu Hamid Al Ghazali responsible for this state of affairs. He lived between 1055-1111AD. But Hassan Hassan says that’s not true and he is innocent of any responsibility for that change. Hassan says that the one man force, driving Muslims away from science, was actually Abu Ali al-Hassan al-Tusi, better known as Nizam al-Mulk, the grand vizier of the Seljuq dynasty between 1018–1092.

For the first time in Islamic history, religious studies became institutionalised. Because of the new winds that were blowing through the palaces of Baghdad, the smart Muslim dropped science like a hot potato, and did the smart thing. Religious studies were seen as a more lucrative career path – that was where the big bucks were. Up until then science and Islam were intertwined – liked the strands in DNA’s double helix.

Century on century then passed. Islam that had been such a dominant and feared force in the world at first started to hit the hard defensive walls of Christian Europe which brought what had up until then been the irresistible advance of Islam to a grinding halt. Defensive resistance of the Christians to Islam, with the advances in science driven technology, hastened the decline of Islam. The West began to advance into Islamic countries. Stalemate turned to defeat. The first of many great insults was the arrival of Napoleon with a small force of French soldiers, and scientists to add insult to injury, thrashed the Mamluks and then marched on the Promised Land. It was other European powers, mainly the Royal Navy, that ended Napoleon’s successes in the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire went into a slow decline and eventually died the death at the end of the First World War.

But then, a little bit at a time, slow at first, but gathering pace much more swiftly then, change did start to sweep through just one country in the Middle East. It was the British Mandate of Palestine – the promised new Jewish homeland. This is what happened.

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