 |
 |
 |
||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
A Pseudo-scientist gets 25 million Taka from PM Khaleda! by Jahed Ahmed
It's midnight. While thinking to sign off from the Internet and
instead, going to bed; I , amid a drowsy state, thought of surfing
the day's Bangla daily Jugantor. A big picture
of two smiling faces has suddenly alerted me: both those of recipient and
the liberal (?) donor (see Jugantor issue, Friday, June 04,
2004 : http://www.jugantor.com/friday/).:
Our honorable Bangladeshi Prime Minister Begum Khaleda has handed over a check worth two crores and fifty lakhs , or in other words, 25 million Taka, to a scientist, who is more known as a devoted thinker spending his time in finding so called "scientific miracles in Quran" than a doing true or rationalistic science. His name is Prof. Dr. M. Shamsher Ali- now the president of Bangladesh Academy of Science. I don't know, what is the mystery behind their smiles; but I do know, despite scarcity of competent scientists in Bangladesh; there are, still, more capable and competent scientists than Quranic researcher Dr. S. Ali.
For the kind attention of readers, three facts about Dr. Ali I
am mentioning below:
1. Dr. Shamsher Ali is the chairperson of
the board of authors, who , in the past, wrote such trashes as " Scientific
Indications in The Holy Quran" , published by Islamic
Foundations, BD (For
details- Interested readers may refer to MM
(www.mukto-mona.com) authors'
page, where an article I wrote long ago for NFB entitled
"Claiming Allah in Science: Hijacking Mankind�s
Real Glory??" is
available).
2. He is one of the member of the editorial board of Bangla version
of "Al Quranul Karim", published by Islamic Foundation,
BD.
3. Before I came to USA, I had a privilege to interact with him in
his Dhanmondhi's residence for a short while. I couldn't
help pity the guy, who was so passionately busy in his small research
(!) room equipped (?) with books full of so called
"scientific miracles".
When such big amount of money as 25 million Taka goes to
the hands of a pseudo-scientist through the hands of the Prime
Minister, herself, of one of the poorest countries in the world in the
name of developing science and technology ; I am reminded of few lines
of Poet Shamsur Rahman:
"My country runs on the back of a
strange camel!"
("Odbhud uthher prishthey cholechhe swadesh")
(The end)
New York
4 May 2004
Jamal Hasan's comment:
I have extremely pleased to see your short piece on this mentally
deranged gatekeeper of an archaic dogma, named Shamsher Ali. Like many
of the folks growing up in the dogmatic religion called Islam, this guy
made a 180 degree turn around to become a Islamist propagandist. I had
the chance to meet this person back in 1973. Some of my friends Notre
Dame Bangla teacher Mukhter Ahmed, Amit Bhattacharjee and myself formed
a film club named CLAPSTICK FILM GUILD. Our inaugural ceremony was
supposed to be held in the Atomic Energy Center Auditorium. Our first
movie to be shown was "Porcupines are born without bristles" of
Bulgaria. Shamsher Ali was very much helpful in giving us the
auditorium. We met him on several occasions. He came across as a liberal
Bengali Muslim person with good knowledge about contemporary Calcutta's
art films. He talked about "Ajantrik" of Rittik Ghatok and Satyajit
Ray's works. Never he appeared to be an Islamist. Today when I see his
name in global science oriented Islamist activities, I can not believe
my eyes. I did some research on him lately by GOOGLING Dr. Shamsher Ali.
I found a treasure trove of information on his latest activities. It is
very sad how Islamic virus affects any liberal human being who happened
to be born in a Muslim family. More frustrating thing is this sort of
"role models" are spreading a dangerous 1400 year old irrational dogma
which is not good for the future of mankind. I think Muktomona, FFI and
other freethinking forums should expose such conniving Mullahs who are
real wolves in sheepskin. By the way, I wrote some comments about him
5/6 months ago - may be those can be traced in a forum like Nirvana.
Finally, you did an excellent job bringing the subject to the fore. Sincerely yours, Jamal Hasan
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
||
|
||||
