ISLAMABAD, April 23: President Pervez Musharraf urged the Muslim world on Wednesday to focus on harmonizing the Islamic education with modern knowledge for achieving all-round developments.

“The way forward to overcoming socio-economic problems and making sustained progress for the Muslim world is to harmonize the religious education with modern knowledge,” he said at the International Islamic University.

The president, who is also chancellor of the university, was addressing academicians and students after inaugurating an exhibition of rare Qur’anic manuscripts and holy relics of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him).

Mr Musharraf said the Muslim world should use their collective financial resources for establishing institutions of excellence in modern fields.

“We should concentrate on acquiring excellence in mathematics, medicine, information, diplomacy, trade, commerce, law, science and technology.”

The president noted that the Muslim world is facing illiteracy, poverty and backwardness, saying that it “must convert the present descending course into ascending course” of development.

Referring to the new world order, he said the Islamic countries were ill-equipped to face its challenges.

“We must know this because unless we know these facts, we will never correct ourselves.”

He said, despite owning 70 per cent of the world’s energy resources and representing one-fourth of the world population, the collective GDP of the Muslim countries is insignificant in the global context.

The president contrasted the $1,200 billion GDP of the Muslim world with $2,500 billion of Germany and $5,000 billion of Japan. “This is due to technological gap that exists between the Muslim countries and the developed world,” he explained.

Referring to the state of education in the Islamic countries, President Musharraf said it had just 380 universities compared with 1,000 in Japan alone.

Every year, the Muslim world produces 500 PhDs while the UK alone produces 3,000 doctors of philosophy in various disciplines annually, he stated.

The government, he said, was conscious of the importance of higher learning and had initiated a programme to increase the number of PhDs to 300 annually in three years, to 500 per annum in five years and 1,000 per annum in 10 years. “That is the way forward,” he said.

He noted that the Muslim countries had less than one per cent share of the world’s research papers.

The president said if the overall direction was descendant, the Muslim world would never rise. He said if the course was set and the Muslim world adhered to it, it would make progress in the not-too-distant future.

“The way forward is not a confrontationist approach, the way forward is concentrating on human resource development and collective use of resources that are available in all fields,” he said and added that the Muslim countries needed to cooperate, organize and manage themselves and collectively raise the level of the Ummah.—APP