World’s Top Intellectuals are Muslims: says a survey Foreign Policy, a bimonthly U.S international affairs journal; after a survey, published the world’s top 20 public intellectuals – Reuters. Surprisingly, the first 10 are all Muslims; one woman among them. This certainly is interesting news, but the journal’s editors don’t seen convinced with the outcome; in the introduction of the July/August review they wrote, “Rankings are an inherently dangerous business.” Noam Chomsky or Richard Dawkins; whom many other intellectuals might have put at the top, appeared only in the second 10 or in a much more mixed list of post-polls write-ins. It turned out that, some candidates ran publicity campaigns on their personal website, interviews or media friendly reports. “No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list,” the introduction said. “In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in. His supporters—typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims—were eager to cast ballots not only for their champion but for other Muslims in the Top 100. Thanks to this groundswell, the top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim. The ideas, for which they are known, particularly concerning Islam, differ significantly. It’s clear that, in this case, identity politics carried the day.” Yet, the results are exciting; topping the list is, as expected- Fethullah Gülen, who heads a network of schools and media which is probably the world’s largest moderate Muslim movement and is one of the most influential Muslims that many must have not heard of. Second in line was, Muhammad Yunus – the Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for the microcredit project run by his Grameen Bank. The other four with the concept of scholarly preaching were – (3)Youssef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood and weekly preacher on al-Jazeera satellite television, (6) Amr Khaled, a popular Egyptian television preacher, (7) Abdolkarim Soroush , an Iranian reformist and (8) Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born scholar popular among young European Muslims. The rest four, who made their way due to their secular activities are; (4) Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature,(5) Aitzaz Ahsan, the Lahore lawyer whose lawyer’s protest movement is possibly the strongest voice of secular civil society in Pakistan. The ninth and tenth places were taken by Ugandan-born cultural anthropologist; Mahmood Mamdani and Iranian human rights lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize; Shirin Ebadi, respectively.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 05:49:04 +0000
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