The 40th anniversary of man's landing on the moon leads Abdel-Moneim Said to ask why the Arabs are so happy to take a backseat when it comes to exploring the forefront of technology Last week saw the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. I well remember the days between 16 and 20 July, 1969, following the launch of Apollo 11 to the moment the lunar module landed on the surface of the moon and Neil Armstrong took "one small step for man but a huge leap for mankind". Forty years on they were memories that left me feeling despondent, not least because manned moon landings have remained a US monopoly, and because the Arabs, then as now, remain no starters when it comes to the space race. No Arab has ever made it to the moon, nor have the Arabs ever shown the slightest interest in doing so. In 1969 Armstrong's tentative first step sparked little Arab interest from the standpoint of scientific and technological progress, or from that of sheer human achievement. That Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrin had travelled beyond the confines of our planet to the first gateway to outer space was treated as one more mundane, quotidian fact. What appeared to matter most to the Arabs at the time, certainly as far as the space race was concerned, was the simple question of who -- the US or the USSR -- would get there first. Arabs were rooting Moscow, most because it supported Arab causes, some because it was socialist, everyone because it stood against the US. It occurred to no one to ponder why we were not involved in the quest to conquer space. Everyone was swept up in pro-Soviet ardour, strangely redolent of the pro- Chinese fervour of today, at least until Beijing's recent clashes with the Uyghur Muslim minority. Outside the real action, Arab peoples and governments created their own diversion. It was a comfortable distraction, costing little and requiring no expense of energy beyond cheering along other countries that were striving to beat the West, or the US, or Israel. Moscow had scored an early victory over Washington when it succeeded in overcoming the gravitational pull of earth and sending a manned missile into orbit around the earth. I still recall trading pictures of Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut who became the first man in outer space, with schoolmates. A month later, on 25 May 1961, president Kennedy issued the order that an American should reach the moon before the end of the decade, and the US space programme shifted gear. In response the Russians stepped up their own programme. Three years before the Apollo 11 mission the Russians landed an unmanned spacecraft on the moon and brought back rock samples. When, in 1969, the Americans returned with an even larger collection of moon rocks, they presented some of them to world -- including Arab -- leaders. The US triumph quickly eclipsed the Soviet's unmanned moon landing. Two decades later, the Soviet Union would meet its own eclipse. The unravelling of the USSR was not precipitated by Moscow's defeat in the space race, or by what later became known as Star Wars technology. Rather, Moscow had become more preoccupied with ideology than technology. Scientific and technological research suffered as its value to a one-party state that was steadily moving towards the brink of collapse declined. The Arabs, meanwhile, attained their own, spurious foothold in space. Rumours spread like wildfire that Armstrong had converted to Islam upon hearing the call to prayer on the surface of the moon, allowing the first man to walk on the moon to be co-opted to the annals of Arab and Muslim glory. Thus did the Arabs find their way into space, second hand, without having to go to all that trouble of building spacecraft and training astronauts. Next the Arabs purchased a satellite: Arabsat, from which they could broadcast dreams of reviving their erstwhile unity, came to embody the ideal of Arab nationalism in its purest, most ethereal form. But enthusiasm for the satellite soon faded as individual states began to buy their own satellites, or purchase space and channels on those of other countries. With the dawn of the age of the mobile phone and satellite television, the Arabs found their dream come true in space: they had at their command the potential to speak endlessly about Arab backwardness, courtesy of the technology produced by others. Once upon a time laments about the pitiful condition of the Arabs were restricted to the printed media. Now more than 500 Arabic satellite stations broadcast their mournful dirge 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How did things reach such a pass? I have a theory as to why, and like all theories it is based on a set of hypotheses which can be subjected to various proofs or refutations. I would argue that the Arabs have not reached the moon, and never will, because their thought, essentially, revolves around a desperate craving for certitude whereas scientific endeavour is the product of doubt. It is the result of the perception that there is a hole in our understanding of life. Filling that gap by probing the unfamiliar and going beyond the limits of the known forms the quintessential spirit of scientific enquiry. The Arabs search for the absolute. Others, the ones who strive to reach the moon, grasp the relative. For the Arabs truth is immutable while to others it is dynamic and in flux. On Arab satellite channels the talk is endlessly of constants. Foreign channels embrace a worldview of variables. Think of Osama Bin Laden, Ayman El-Zawahri and the various bands of Islamists. Think of Arab nationalists, Nasserists, Baathists, and the various tribes of Arab leftists. The confidence they project that they alone have somehow come into possession of the truth is so palpable you could almost grasp it with your hands. Reading about the causes of the collapse of the Pharaonic civilisation, the 3,000 years of accomplishment in architecture, astronomy and mathematics that had awed Greek philosophers and merchants and produced a religion so revered that Alexander the Great went all the way to Siwa in order to be baptised into the cult of Amun, I came across a plangent analysis. By the time of Alexander's pilgrimage to Siwa Egypt was clearly no longer the mighty and dynamic power it had been. It was ripe for the Persian, Hellenic and, subsequently, Roman, invasions. The priests of Amun, the author wrote, had long been resistant to change and suspicious of scientific enquiry. One was reported to have scoffed at Greeks who asked as many questions as children. Yet it was the Greeks who had the last laugh. When a civilisation stops asking questions, when it ceases to wonder and no longer views the world as mutable by the force of scientific and technological progress, it forfeits any raison d'être and becomes prey to penetration, invasion and domination by civilisations that may once have seemed impoverished but which nevertheless cultivated the determination, the spirit of enquiry, that enabled them to prevail.
