Indian Muslim Archives@Rustum_0
The main reason why Muslims lag so far behind others in academia lies in the fall of Indian Muslims and systematic destruction of their institutions, who/which had long served as the intellectual powerhouse of the Ummah, from the aftermath of the fall of Khwarezm (1221) to the very eve of the creation of Pakistan in 1947.
Muslims (and we ourselves) never talk about this.
Aligarh Muslim University, Osmania, and Jamia once stood among the leading secular centres of learning in the entire Islamicate world. In the wake of Partition, an estimated 60–80% of their academic staff migrated to Pakistan, triggering an intellectual rupture of lasting consequence.
What remained was a diminished faculty that gradually became mired in corruption, administrative decay & declining academic standards. Institutions once likened to a "Muslim Harvard," which had attracted the sons of nobility, landed elites, and refined gentry, lost the very social and intellectual milieu that had sustained their prestige.
Over time, these institutions were absorbed into mass education frameworks and, under shifting political and funding structures, saw their elite character erode into that of ordinary state universities, increasingly reliant on their inherited reputation rather than renewed excellence.
Yet, it is equally important to note that those who migrated did not succeed in recreating institutions of comparable stature in Pakistan. While many contributed meaningfully within their individual capacities, their efforts did not crystallize into enduring centres of excellence. Nor did the Pakistani or later Bangladeshi establishments manage to build institutions commanding similar intellectual authority or global prestige.
There are, of course, multiple factors behind this broader academic decline, and what I have written is merely one of those.
