Muslims on Top

The top ten thinkers in the world today are Muslims!

Fethullah Gulen

In a poll conducted by Prospect, a British magazine, of a hundred of the world’s top thinkers, the top ten were Muslims. Alhamdulillah! This is especially surprising considering the poll was jointly hosted by Foreign Policy, a US publication. Of course, the value of such a poll is dubious when proven intellectual frauds like Ayaan Hirsi Ali make the top 20 ahead of he likes of Vaclav Havel, Niall Ferguson and even the spineless apostate Salman Rushdie.

Still, it’s great to see Muslims on top, ousting rabid right-wing wannabes like Christopher Hitchens - who once was left-wing, but having never outlived or outclassed Gore Vidal, resorted to the journalism of convenience and dipped his nib in the vitriolic ink of hypocrisy and hatred that represents the majority of the West’s Islamophobic media machinery today.

So here we have it, the top ten, led by a guy I’ve never heard of…

  1. Fethullah Gulen
  2. Muhammad Yunus
  3. Yusuf al-Qaradawi
  4. Orhan Pamuk
  5. Aitzaz Ahsan
  6. Amr Khaled
  7. Abdolkarim Soroush
  8. Tariq Ramadan
  9. Mahmood Mamdani
  10. Shirin Ebadi

Nice especially to see two of my favourite Islamic writers in that list. (I won’t tell you who they are). Two of that list are also Nobel laureates. Interesting things happening in Turkey these days and I don’t just mean their football team reaching the semi-finals of Euro 2008, though I must confess to having cheered loudly when they equalised against the prematurely euphoric Croatia.

Oh by the way, no Qadianis in the top 100. Funny that. I tried to think of a solitary Qadiani thinker. I failed. You see, they don’t think. Because if they did, they wouldn’t be Qadiani anymore now, would they?

6 Responses to “Muslims on Top”


  1. 1 DE

    Only 4 or so Chinese thinkers? Oh dear.

  2. 2 shahid

    All polls are open to abuse. Like war, there was nothing stopping any side from “abusing” the poll.

  3. 3 DE

    Looking at the previous years poll, the main changes have been re-arrangement not wholesale hijacking.

  4. 4 shahidaziz

    Sorry to disappoint you by quoting Prof Akhtar a prominent Pakistani economist and a Lenin prize winner:

    “I don’t say that all intelligent people are Ahmadia but all Ahmadis are intelligent people”

    Perhaps the sunnis should look at their own beliefs such as the Holy Prophet marrying a 4 year old girl, keeping women without marriage etc to find out who thinks and who doesn’t

  5. 5 shahid

    All Ahmadis are intelligent? Are you serious? Every heard Mirza Masroor talking? If they are intelligent, what is their contribution to literature in the last century? If they are intelligent, why do you say such hateful and untrue things, do you not realise it makes you look twisted and hateful and sick?

    Here: http://suspectpaki.com/2008/01/21/the-end-of-ahmadiyya/

  6. 6 Jawwad

    i doubted about no 5..

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