Muhammad Hamid Zaman PhD While the immediate challenges facing the Muslim world may be related to national security rampant disease and bad governance, the long-term crisis we face is not the poverty of means, but the poverty of ideas and reason. A society that is quick to blame the outsiders for all its ills, that believes in giant conspiracies behind every calamity, little or large. is unlikely to change the status quo. The prevalent poverty of imagination and reason itself is well-suited to be declared a conspiracy against a society that used to produce the champions of logic and reason. A careful look at our own actions and approaches should set this record straight. While some may argue that our poverty of thought is because of our poor education, yet in circles of the society that are apparently educated, there is little interest in rigor, in thought and in reason. The problem therefore is not with education, but our approach to education and what we want to get from the process of learning. First, we have distilled all conversations about education to getting  a degree. For us, education is a means to get a better job. The entire purpose of education somehow has been reduced to wealth and economic prosperity. While aiming to achieve a stable economic status is a worthwhile goal, the purpose of education should not be only to get a degree but far beyond it. Somehow, we have taken learning completely out of the equation. The argument...