When ships loaded with slaves docked at American ports, the slave masters made sure the slaves were deprived of any rights. Even newly born babies were considered the property of the master to be sold off when he wished, and the parents had no right to claim them. Knowing that knowledge is a powerful weapon, slaves were kept in the dark and denied the right to read and write. Their masters were afraid that basic education would allow the slaves to forge travel documents and allow them to run away.
Today the world’s new masters are doing their best to ensure that knowledge, especially scientific and technological, remains the domain of the white race to ensure continued supremacy over other races.
New techniques are being used to ensure this. Instead of killing 20 people using guns, a thousand can be killed at a lesser cost: by denying Third World countries access to advanced science and technology. This ensures continued control of the wealth of other countries.
Because science is rapidly developing and expanding, the new masters want to ensure that even the smallest of loopholes is closed so that no one is able to break the blockade. Because knowledge has to be sought in Western universities and learning institutions, scientists from Third World countries educated and trained in the West find it very difficult to cope when they return to their backward countries. They soon find themselves forced to leave. The result is a continuous brain drain of young scientists in every field going abroad to join their predecessors who have worked wonders in the countries that became their new homes.
Science is a powerful weapon; in fact it is the most potent of all weapons of mass destruction. That is why higher learning was for a long time confined to members of religious institutions, who were exclusively authorized to prescribe charms to counter evil spirits or issue indulgence deeds granting people freedom from punishment. A similar segregation of the privileged few from the ignorant masses still prevails today.
United Nations inspectors in Iraq acting on behalf of America and Britain are not leaving a stone unturned, universities and scientists’ homes included, in their search for weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi people, meanwhile, are denied the right to learn and acquire knowledge lest they produce these weapons.
An international campaign targeting Arab countries is demanding changes in our education systems. We have long called for change, but since this is our business we should be left to do it ourselves without pressure from outside.
If foreigners are allowed to impose a new education system on us, the first thing they will do will be to safeguard their stranglehold on science and technology. What is left? Books like “A Thousand and One Nights”?
Arab News From the Local Press 1 February 2003
