I remember that one day when I got on the bus, I heard a conversation between a group of young people. I didn’t pay attention to the topic as much as I was attracted by a word someone said, “God bless science.” I liked this saying very much and kept repeating it to myself until I took out a piece of paper and a pen from my bag to write it down. I thought a lot about our situation in the Arab countries. Do we really value science as much as the West does?

Then, I remembered a critical article I saw for a friend on Facebook, and as much as I liked it, it hurt me so much. I laughed and sighed at the same time when I read it. It summarizes what happened in our case, as we all use the products of the developed world and then curse them. The article tells about our weaknesses and ignorance of what is happening around us. “We use cameras of their own making, we download pictures on computers we imported from them, we open the internet whose network they invented for us, we enter the Facebook that they chained us to, and we wear clothes with their brands written on them, and then we think that we are the strongest.”

Yes, we were the strongest when we were interested in science; when we combined the mind and the spirit; when the torches of the young civilization were dispelling the darkness of ignorance, and illuminating the way for humanity.

We are a nation of the word “read”, but we do not read, and other nations have won over us by adopting this word as a way of life, and we have failed to follow it in the best way.

The young people on the said bus were talking about how they “chat” on Facebook and how messages are saved in the inbox without changing for each one. They saluted the science that allowed a young like “Mark Zuckerberg” to invent Facebook and launch it to raise a storm of interest in the world. But the question that crossed my mind was: Do these young people really appreciate knowledge? Do they aspire to be like Zuckerberg? Are they thinking of a community renaissance project?

We really need an intellectual renaissance that will turn our Arab societies upside down. We need an intellectual revolution, confusion, doubt, hesitation, and the transformation of self-evident matters into theory, experiments, and tests. We need an earthquake and a radical destabilization in our minds.

None other than my dentist told me once that we must read books on philosophy, Islamic philosophy, history, geography, psychology, and sociology to elevate our thoughts and ideas. And it is these “arts” that motivate and push us to work and set clear goals that have real values. We must be open to other cultures, philosophies, and visions that are different and contradict the self-evident assumptions that may not be appropriate for our time.

Our Arab societies need a serious change in many issues. They need a change in school and university resources. They need philosophers, intellectuals, and psychological thinkers to make the desired intellectual renaissance for the scientific civilization and getting out of the third-world countries predicament…