‘Islam encourages scientific innovation’

University of Health Sciences (UHS) Vice Chancellor Prof Muhammad Aslam has said science and Islam are compatible and our religion, history and legacy even spur scientific innovation and discovery.
Addressing to a newly-admitted batch of MPhil scholars at the university’s Shams Auditorium on Tuesday, the UHS VC said: “Roots of our scientific backwardness today lied not with our religious beliefs, but with socio-economical and political mishmash which was controlling independent thought”.
Prof Aslam stressed the need of developing an urge to learn ‘like a child who has been drawn to explore beyond the familiar streets of the neighbourhood’. He said: “In our school days we recited the famous poem of Allama Iqbal daily without fail, but only few of us were able to understand its true meaning”.
“It urges us to be the first or the best in whatever we do; it wants us to stand out; and this behaviour is rooted in our genes”, UHS VC expounded, adding students should explore new ideas which might seem eminently illogical but at the same time intuitive and emotionally compelling. —Correspondent