Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood: Difference between revisions

Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood (or Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood, (Urdu: سلطان بشیر الدین محمود), born 1938 ^[1], is a Pakistani nuclear engineer and Islamic scholar educated in Lahore, Pakistan and the Manchester, United Kingdom. Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood is widely popular in Pakistan's scientific and religious circle. He is well known for his contacts and sympathies for Taliban which resulted in ending his prominent engineering career. Sultan Mahmood is also a Islamic scholar as well scientific scholar. He has written more than 15 books concerning with the relationship between Islam and Science.

Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood was born in Amritsar, Punjab, India; his parents migrated to Pakistan in 1947. His father Ch. Sharif Khan was a local village leader (Numberdar) and put all his income to educate his eldest son who stood first in all examinations and got scholarship to study engineering at the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Lahore. He graduated as an electrical engineer in 1962. He joined the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) as an electrical engineer in 1964. In 1967, he went to United Kingdom and attended University of Manchester, where he studied for his masters degree in nuclear engineering. In 1969, he received his M.Sc in nuclear engineering from University of Manchester. He specialized in Nuclear Engineering in 1969 from the Nuclear Technology Education Consortium, Manchester,United Kingdom.

In 1967, Mahmood then came back to Pakistan where he then rejoined Pakistan's nuclear program as a chief nuclear engineer at the KANNUP nuclear power plant in Karachi, where he eventually became the Director General of Nuclear Power at PAEC. He is perhaps most famous for his part in the development of the Pakistani nuclear industry. He worked closely with another Pakistani nuclear scientist, dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan on the Pakistan nuclear weapon project , and designed the Uncrushable plant near Lahore, a heavy water reactor that produces plutonium.^[1] In 1971 he invented an instrument, the SBM probe, to check heavy water leaks in nuclear power plants which is still used world wide. ^{[dubious – discuss]} He also co-design the Chasma nuclear power plant.

Mahmood was an outspoken opponent of the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government, as he was against signing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by Pakistan ^{[citation needed]}. As part of his crackdown on terror groups operating in Pakistan, then-President Gen (R) Pervez Musharraf forced Mahmood into early retirement as "he had expressed sympathies for the Taliban and other Islamic extremists".^[2] After his retirement he founded "Ummah Tameer e Nau" ("Reconstruction for the Islamic Community"), a Pakistani Islamic charity active in Afghanistan. Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) focused on educational institutions, hospitals, demining operations, and Islamism. ^[3]

In August 2001, Mahmood and one of his colleagues at Mahmood's "Ummah Tameer e Nau" charity met with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Afghanistan. "There is little doubt that Mahmood talked to the two Qaeda leaders about nuclear weapons, or that Al Qaeda desperately wanted the bomb", the New York Times reported. ^[3]

Mahmood was arrested in late October 2001 because of his suspected connections with the Taliban. ^[4] George Tenet, then the head of the C.I.A., later described intelligence reports of his meeting with Al Qaeda as “frustratingly vague.” ^[3] He however told them in very clear terms that he had nothing to do with the Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization and he was only working on humanitarian issues like food, health and education. However even though he was considered innocent and released on 22nd December 2001 but was declared a terrorist by the US President in his televised address on 23rd December 2001. Despite clear indications from CIA that he is not involved with any terrorist outfit. ^[5] He suffered a heart attack while in custody and thereafter has not been able to regain his complete health due to the mental and physical torture he had to endure at the hands of the intelligence personnel. During his debriefing, his son Aslam Mahmood, who's a physician at local hospital, told CIA that his father did meet with Osama bin Laden and Osama Bin Laden asked him to build a nuclear bomb for him. But Mahmood declined it and said" it's not easy, you need a big institutions and big amount of money, not couple thousand [Pakistani] rupeer. You should forget it. He also said" I cannot build nuclear bomb by myself; plus Pakistan's government is too sensitive in this matter". Recently, Pakistan's government has putted him in exit control list in which he is not allowed to travel anywhere. After release he has been out of public eye and lives in Islamabad. He has been strictly monitored closely by Pakistani government and federal agencies.

He has written over 15 books, the most well-known being "The Mechanics Doomsday and Life After Death", which is an analysis of the events leading to doomsday in light of scientific theories and Quranic knowledge. His scientific arguements and theories have been challenged by many prominent scientists in Pakistan. A well known Pakistani nuclear physicist dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy and Sultan B. Mahmood had an acrimonious public debate in 1988.^[6] Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy has severely criticized Mr. Bashiruddin Mahmood's theories and the notion of Islamic science in general, calling it ludicrous science. ^[7] Mr. Bashiruddin Mahmood protested that dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy misrepresented his views. This is crossing all limits of decency, he wrote. But should one expect any honesty or decency from anti-Islamic sources? ^[8] In his writings and speeches, Mahmood has advocated sharing Pakistan's nuclear weapons technology with other Islamic nations to hasten the "end of days", which he believed would give rise to Muslim dominance in the world. ^[2] His also written a Tafseer of the Quran in English. Mahmood is reported to be fascinated "with the role sunspots played in triggering the French and Russian Revolutions, World War II and assorted anticolonial uprisings." ^[3] Mahmood has published papers concerning djinni, which are described in the Koran as beings made of fire. He has proposed that djinni could be tapped to solve the energy crisis.^[4] I think that if we develop our souls, we can develop communication with them, Mr. Bashiruddin Mahmood said about djinni in The Wall Street Journal in an interview in 1998. Every new idea has its opponents, he added. But there is no reason for this controversy over Islam and science because there is no conflict between Islam and science. ^[9]

The New York Times has described Mahmood as "an autodidact intellectual with grand aspirations," and noted that "his colleagues began to wonder if Mahmood was mentally sound."^[3] Mahmood made it clear that he believed Pakistan’s bomb was “the property of the whole Ummah,” referring to the worldwide Muslim community. “This guy was our ultimate nightmare,” an American intelligence official told the Times in late 2001. ^[3] US Institute of Historical biographies mentions him in there ‘who is who’ list and presented him a gold medal in 1998. He has also been awarded Gold Medal by the Pakistan Academy of Sciences.^[10]

• The Mechanics of Doomsday and Life After Death (1980)
• Kitab-e-Zindagi (1988)
• Muhammad: The First & the Last (1989)
• The role sunspots and the French and Russian Revolutions, World War II and anticolonial uprisings throughout the world (1999)
• Sources of Energy and djinni (2000)
• Cosmology and Human Destiny (2002)
• A Tafseer of the Holy Quran. (English version) (2005)

• Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1998)
• Gold medal, Pakistan Academy of Sciences (1998)
• Gold medal, U.S Institute of Historical biographies (1998)

• Frantz, Douglas (28 November 2001). "A Nation Challenged: Biological Terror; 2 Pakistanis Linked to Papers on Anthrax Weapons". The New York Times. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)