The Arab-Islamic Summit in Doha and its declaration have stirred emotive discussion, many describing the moot as mere rhetoric without any tangible action. Staged in the wake of Israel's attack on Qatar, the meeting carried urgency but poured cold water on expectations of the Muslim world . However, if history is of any guide, it tells us to be cautions and to look deeper. It is important to analyse where we stand and why, and where we want to go and how. Mere grand declarations without strategic foresight lead us now where. It has been the undoing of Muslim powers before — most notably the Mughals who, despite their wealth and might, collapsed for failing to innovate, unite and adapt to a changing world.

In this context, parallel can be drawn from the SM Ikram's book History of Muslim Civilization in India and Pakistan. He mentioned that a number of factors were responsible for what appeared to be the sudden collapse of Mughal authority after the death of Aurangzeb, but the basic cause was one: the inability of the Mughals to keep pace with the rapid, almost cataclysmic, changes taking place in intellectual life, military organisation and the instruments of offence and defence which ensured the stability and prosperity of states.

The intellectual revolution in Western Europe - with its spirit of inquiry, new discoveries and the wide diffusion of knowledge made possible by the printing press - had unleashed forces destined to lead to European domination.........

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