The Europeans have built the world’s largest particle accelerator, but now we hear that the United Arab Emirates is building the world’s largest shopping center in Dubai.

Does this sound like the Islamic world is heading in the right direction?
The twenty member states of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, gathered some of the world’s greatest scientists to build and operate the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is located in an underground tunnel near Geneva on the border of France and Switzerland, is the most advanced scientific instrument ever created.
The LHC will be used to conduct high-energy particle physics tests to determine if the Higgs boson and other new particles predicted by supersymmetry exist.
It will also be used to study the nature of the early Universe, such as the Quark-gluon plasma state of matter, which existed shortly after the Big Bang, and to attempt to discover what happened to the large amount of anti-matter that was created in the Big Bang.
In addition, LHC tests will study the origins of mass and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
Scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider will also try to determine if there are other dimensions, as predicted in string theory.
Many centuries ago, the Islamic world had a Golden Age of scholarship, science, and technology.
At that time, Europeans came to study in Muslim Andalucia, where they were introduced to art, culture, science, philosophy, literature, architecture, and many other fields. The words algebra and algorithm are of Arabic origin, and Muslims introduced Europeans to Arabic numerals and the concept of zero.
Muslim Andalucia was the light of Europe during the Dark Ages.
Indeed, Muslim Andalucia even played a major role in inspiring the European Renaissance.
But where are we now?
As the Europeans built on their Renaissance, we Muslims descended into a Semi-Dark Age, not as bad as Europe’s Dark Ages, but still quite dim nonetheless, especially compared to the Golden Age of Islam. It could be called a Twilight Age. And we are only now beginning to reach the dawn which will bring us out of the twilight and into the full light of the new day of the Information Age.
However, we need to start a full-fledged Islamic Renaissance to bring the Islamic world back into the light.
Can you hear the first prayer call of the dawn of the Islamic Renaissance?
But the UAE’s project to build the world’s largest shopping mall beside the world’s tallest building, the Burj Dubai, is just a false dawn. The Dubai Tower project has a striking resemblance to the Tower of Babel, and may suffer a similar fate.
If we can start an Islamic Renaissance, we can use its achievements to uplift the lumpen-ummah living in poverty, illiteracy, and squalor.
Indeed, the struggle for social justice for the Muslim masses should be one of the main motivating factors inspiring us to start the Islamic Renaissance.
In 200 years, history books will record the discoveries made as a result of the construction of the world’s largest particle accelerator of the early 21st century. In 200 years, will anyone remember the world’s largest shopping mall? Are we even interested in it now?
While the merchants of the bazaari class of the Islamic world are busy making obscene amounts of money and building monuments to their vanity, the Muslim masses are hungry and the Islamic world is falling even further behind in the fields of science and technology, while the true dawn of the new Islamic Renaissance, which is desperately needed, has still not come.
The Westerners have built the world’s largest particle accelerator, and we Muslims are now wasting our money on a plan to build the world’s largest bazaar.
Although there are endless conspiracy theories floating around Muslim countries claiming that the Westerners are trying to undermine the Islamic world, and some of them very well may be true, in this instance it is not a conspiracy by outsiders. We have done this to ourselves. We Muslims have allowed ourselves to fall behind in the fields of science and technology.
And if we don’t start the new Islamic Renaissance now -- not in twenty years -- we will fall even farther behind.
If we don’t start the new Islamic Renaissance now, we will find ourselves living in the Information Age but possessing no information.
Why can’t we Muslims build the world’s largest particle accelerator, or the world’s most advanced hospital, or the world’s greatest university, or the world’s best social welfare system, able to lift the Muslim masses out of their poverty, illiteracy, and squalor?
Well, we can do all that, if we apply ourselves and start the new Islamic Renaissance.
The new Islamic Renaissance will bring us back to the roots of Islam and create a flowering of art, literature, culture, philosophy, spirituality, science, and technology.
The new Islamic Renaissance will also teach us how to balance Information Age modernity and Islamic tradition, which is a burning question in the Muslim world.
According to the tenets of Islam, Muslims are required to seek out knowledge. And if we don’t seek out knowledge, we are violating one of the main principles of the faith and undermining the Islamic ummah.
So let’s perform our duty.
Let’s start the Islamic Renaissance now.