Mr Riaz Haq, regarding your post at October 31st, 2009 2:39 pm, I must address a few important points to clear your confusion. It would be a bonus if other people are also enlightened through this effort.

The global university ranking exercise that you mention is by default always mired in controversy and disagreements. Moreover, you would notice that the list is very western and anglophone -centric.

Quite naturally, English speaking western countries are found at the top of such rankings because the authors of such reports and league tables are mostly familiar with English speaking universities. That is the reason why, even from nonwestern countries, we may see an odd Indian institution or two popping up in those rankings but not many from the Muslim majority countries while in reality many universities in the Muslim world are far superior to anything in India, or similar third world countries.

To further corroborate the point that such ranking exercises by anglophone authors are biased towards anglophone universities due to their limited knowledge of the outside world and inherent cultural favouritism, let us notice that a massive research, scientific, industrial, military and economic powerhouse like Russian Federation – although it lost half its population of the Soviet Union to several independent republics – is most noted for its absence in western produced rankings.

One can easily observe that in reality, when the measures are objective, neutral and unbiased, such as during international mathematical contests or olympiads (where cultural and financial considerations affect contestants’ performance the least) Russian universities and students are seeing topping the charts by a huge margin against the very best Western universities or students. In reality, upon further examination, it is discovered that the top western performers are actually foreigners; thus in reality, western real performance and ability would be even lower.

One can see that Russian ranking exercises have also been undertaken to rank universities globally, but that also suffers from the same parochialism as mentioned in the British report. Though there is reason for “consolation”, that many Muslim majority countries’ universities in the erstwhile Soviet Union (like those in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan) are rated highly agains their global peers by Russian ratings exercises.

British or western publications that suggest Russia has as many or fewer universities in the “Top 500″ of the world (no matter however “quality” is adjudged) than such minnows as Netherlands, Denmark, Zionists, Brazil or Mexico should be taken with a “pinch of salt” or with sketicism.

I hope it’s well known what level of scientific, military, industrial and technological prowess is possessed by a mighty country as the Russian Federation.

The lack of Muslim majority countries in western originated rankings of global universities only shows lack of knowledge of Muslim world by those western authors (which is not hard to understand, given the general Western ignorance, hedonism, and social apathy they have developed).

Russian Federation tried to rectify the situation by publishing their own ratings exercise which, rightly, placed many Russian universities amongst the world’s best while wrongly not scouring the entire globe for assessment of university education and/or research.

Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Malaysia, Brunei, and others should try to conduct ratings exercise for universities globally BUT by bringing notable Muslim world universities’ efforts to the fore.

Massalama