Reminiscence and taking a lesson

In the past years - specifically in the late eighties - World and Arab newspapers published a piece of news about the exposure of a data center subordinate to the Israeli Intelligence Agency to informational onslaught, or what is known as Informational virus, which caused a huge damage to the Center that is said to be millions if not billions of dollars.

The attack was done by a Lebanese Sunni engineer, after observation and search, the Israeli security forces arrested the engineer and before he was killed, they took the needed information about the virus because the virus was not known to them. All informational antiviruses failed to detect it or clean it, so they learnt something new. 

That incident forces me to take you back to the past not to take lessons from -but I am desperate from changing the Arab mentalities- but to compare the capabilities of that engineer who was no longer mentioned after that incident to our conditions now? He was skilful in one of the sophisticated technologies, wore elegant clothes, spoke foreign languages, but he was a religious Muslim from inside. He was not mentioned in the books of heroes because foreign thinkers wanted to instill in our educational system a certain image for heroes such as the bearded man who carries a weapon and rides a horse because they wanted us to think that such image threatens and frightens them.

However, what really frightens them is the existence of such a hero who combines between the teachings of Islam and technology. In order to succeed we have to keep fundamentalism in our hearts and show sincerity to Allah in secret, whereas our cultural appearance does not contradict our religious reality. We need to master a field of science besides our Shari`ah sciences; do not you see that they have centers for the Middle East, the Meghreb and the Gulf studies?

Do we have specialized centers for studying Europe, America, and Asia? Of course not, and even if they exist, they will be old fashion; how long we will be living in theologian education without applied sciences? We have to ride the train of sophisticated science otherwise we shall be stepped over by other nations.