ABSTRACT
The rise of science was a success story somewhat more inspiring than other modes of Western success. Science in the West lived by independent societies; it was integrated into the primary and secondary educational curriculum and popularized and identified with health and civilization. While the miniscule student communities recruited into the Ottoman military schools were being introduced to Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes and Newton, science in Europe continued to progress, accelerating from discovery to discovery, leaving Muslims ever more behind. The theory of Charles Darwin added a weapon of mass destruction to the arsenal of religious conservatism against science and was wielded with effect when the theory penetrated the Muslim world in the late 1870s. In a few Muslim countries there arose small parties of reformers who advocated the adoption of Western learning and techniques to employ the secrets of Western power and stave off further defeat, occupation and economic servitude.
