By Najwa Yusman
GOMBAK, 19 March 2022: The history in the Muslim world shows that Muslims were paying attention to research. However, in today’s world, Muslims seemed to lose the willpower to do research in which they attempted to divert all their energy to other places, a conference was told on Thursday (17 March).
This perspective was shared by Prof. Dr. Elmira Akhmetova, a senior researcher at Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Freiburg University Alexander von Humbolt Fellow, Germany.
She was delivering her message at the conference organised by the International Institute for Muslim Unity (IIMU) on the topic ‘The International Seminar of Young Researchers: Addressing Contemporary Social Issues” as one of the keynote speakers.
Based on her own experiences in the field of research, Prof. Dr. Elmira stated the major problems that related to the alarming situation of Muslim and research was the relations between intellectual stagnation and the crisis in the Muslim mind.
“We still have the crisis in our mind due to our experiences, history and political situation,” she said.
Dr. Elmira remarked that another two problems that are still missing from Muslim’s desire to do research which are the absence of willpower to develop and the psychological condition of the entire ummah.
When it comes to willpower, Dr. Elmira believed that it is something that came within ourselves, a feeling to change and a sense of responsibility as a khalifah.
As the psychological condition of the entire ummah is crucial, she mentioned how the mental condition is related to all other problems of Muslim researchers concerning social ills, political, economic and welfare problems.
Besides, other underlying problems were also raised by Dr. Elmira whereby old scholars seemed to have patterns in their intellectual thought.
She highlighted old scholars’ attitudes that revolved around apologetic nature, romanticising the Muslim past, and blaming others where strangers were accused to have the responsibility for our failures.
Nevertheless, Dr. Elmira believed that young researchers could play an important role and give contributions to the world.
In this context, she applauded IIUM for being one of the leading universities in the Muslim country that train their students to be young researchers.
“Try to learn from your supervisor and lecturers which could help you to widen your horizon,” she further urged.
The international conference was held live on Thursday (17 March) via Zoom Meeting and YouTube. It was joined by international speakers and selected IIUM students to present their work. ***