Dr M Aslam Parvaiz likes to call himself a man of science. "It's not just a subject for me, but an ideology," says the botany professor and vice-chancellor of Hyderabad's Maulana Azad National Urdu University. It was with this scientific temperament that Parvaiz first engaged with the Quran, years ago. "The most fundamental thing that struck me was that while the Quran urged every reader to observe and explore nature and use it for the service of humanity, in Islam, we had somehow vertically divided education into the worldly and religious," he explains, over a telephonic interview. This went against the spirit of the faith.

A living example of this, says Parvaiz, is the madrasa, the Islamic seminary meant to encourage learning of all kinds. Once centres of intellectual and scientific talent that nurtured scientist Jabir ibn Hayyan (721-815) and doctor Abu Ali Sina (980-1037), madrasas of today—especially in India—are "much removed from the
21st century".