Translator: Chloe Zhang Reviewer: Denise RQ
Hi.
Between 1 and 3%
of the global online content is in Arabic.
It sounds small, right? But then make it worse.
If you go to Internet and look to the top 10 million websites around the world,
you'll find that just 0.8% out of them are in Arabic.
Here it starts to get smaller. But I'm not done yet.
Actually, we Arabs are doing as good as as Czech Republic here in red.
But you have to know that in the Czech Republic
there are roughly about 10 million people.
We, Arab native speakers, are 422 million people
living around the world.
So, why should we care
and what are the consequences of this fact on our life?
Actually, maybe we need to care a little bit more.
And I'll tell you why by telling you a short story.
I left Syria in 2001.
I went to France to study Biology at University of Lyon,
and there, I spent 10 years studying and studying,
and I had my PhD degree in 2010.
10 years in France, then I moved from France and went to Cambridge University
where I worked actually as a researcher for four years now in Babraham Institute.
And in total, I have worked and studied
in science, for 14 years.
14 years, I haven't seen more than 10 Arabic native speakers
working or studying in this field.
So this is a problem.
And this was the sparkle of what I'll tell you about today.
This is totally our problem, definitely our problem.
We have, as scientists, the duty to show our people, in the Arab world,
the importance of science, of research, of scientific research.
And we need to motivate people, the students
to get involved in the scientific research.
We need to push them, to motivate them
to build a career based on scientific research.
What I'm saying here might sound really an exaggeration, you know,
but believe me, it's close enough to the reality.
What I'm trying to say
is that the lack of interest in the scientific research,
which is to a large extent
associated with the lack of reliable Arabic online content,
both combined together can explain a lot of our problems.
Nearly all of our problems.
Cultural, economical, social [problems], whatever you want.
So what's our responsibility here, as grown up, educated people?
To make out of science a priority in the Arab world.
How can we create new ways to show to our people over there
how they should ask questions and try to answer it every time,
and how can we show how life would be without the scientific research.
It would be boring, trivial, and to a large extent, meaningless.
So what do we need? And how can it be done?
Actually, we need three things.
First of all, we need to explain the latest scientific articles,
published recently, last week or yesterday.
And we need to show the importance of these scientific articles.
and the impact of them on our life.
The second thing that we need is to show that referring any information
to its source is very crucial here.
We shouldn't go and read whatever we want,
and then we believe it, then go and discuss about it.
And we suffer of that in the Arab world.
This is a disease, a real disease.
And finally, we need to go and speak to people.
When we speak about science,
we need to speak in an easy and simple Arabic language.
Far from that used in media channels.
When they try to speak about science, they [stiff] and rough Arabic language.
In short, let's get people motivated.
Let's get them enjoy science when we talk about it.
So three years ago, I created a simple Facebook page.
Yes, simple Facebook page.
And I called it the Syrian Researchers.
It aimed to do exactly what I told you just now.
At the beginning, I really struggled to get people interested in this project.
No one was really interested, no one was seeing why.
But later on, people started to join me on this journey.
People like scientists, medics, architects, artists,
or even university students,
all of them decided to join this movement.
All of them believed in the project, in its value, in the use of it.
And then, we created a team,
and this team reorganized the structure of this initiative.
We created specialized teams.
And along with the team managers, we set down goals, scheme work, policies.
As a consequence, we got more attention, and more people started to join us.
Today, the Syrian Researchers initiative
has roughly about 300 people working together.
We are all together.
Many from Syria, but there are others from Iraq,
Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Algeria.
We are living all around the world, from Japan to Brazil,
going through Europe and going through the Middle East.
Despite all of our differences. This is amazing.
Despite all our differences:
cultural, social, religion, politics,
countries, all of that,
we were all united
to rewrite science in Arabic
like our [500 students].
Later on, we started to become a source
for reliable scientific information.
Everyone started to talk about us in the Middle East.
If you have any question about anything go and ask the Syrian Researchers.
We have over 100 messages a day.
You don't need to have a university degree to understand what we're saying.
Our readers and followers are coming
from all social levels, all ages, all countries.
No matter what.
And you all know what our countries are going through today.
Despite the political situation that we are living in today,
despite the fact that everything has to belong to something,
I'm proud to say it, we managed to be one of the rare places,
where everyone can talk to everyone about anything forgetting our differences.
And this is because we created one simple rule.
In the Syrian Researchers, we talked about everything related to knowledge,
as far as it doesn't involve religion or politics.
And guess what? It worked.
So after the Facebook page, we created the website.
We started with 200 dollars
and we created today, the Syrian Researchers website,
which is considered as number one scientific Arabic website in the world.
This is in terms of visitors, and in terms of content.
We have over 1 million visitors per month.
And we have published so far over 5,600 articles, covering too many fields,
20 fields, from medicine, to biology, to whatever you want,
including even music and art.
Our team is working hard day and night,
in order to find, prepare, and translate the best scientific articles
in order to increase this knowledge that we need in the Arab world.
And our impact is growing.
And honestly, today we have more than 700,000 people following us on Facebook
and over 40,000 following us on Twitter.
And we have new projects as well.
We are about creating the first Arabic platform for scientific research.
It's called "Menares".
And it's a platform for the scientists in the Middle East, the north of Africa,
in order to be able to exchange knowledge and skills
in an easy, fast, and effective way.
So it sounds like it's wonderful, it's beautiful; it's a pink world.
Everything was easy.
We went through it like a fish in the sea.
It wasn't the case. I hoped that it was, but it wasn't.
Actually, you have to know we are not here to just talk about science,
we are not here to introduce new scientific news, or new scientific facts.
No. What we are trying to do here
is to introduce a new way of thinking to the Arab world.
And new scientific way of thinking that might lead us to free us
from the nonobjective thinking,
and the pseudosciences affecting and infecting our society.
And you can understand how down we feel sometimes,
when those people who refuse these changes start to fire back nicely.
But fortunately, we are managing what we are doing today,
and the enemies of yesterday are our friends today.
Some of those people who used to be our enemies,
some of them aligned themselves with us.
Some of them today send us messages, "Please, can I join your movement?"
Some of them are doing what we are doing.
They are following our example to spread knowledge and science in the Arab world.
So it worked. Finally it worked.
So what's left?
As you know, we need to increase the reliability
of our Arabic scientific online content,
and we need to continue introducing our population
to the scientific methodology.
That would lead the societies to be more objective in their thinking,
hence, [they will be] more willing to accept their differences.
And in the long term, we are trying to reach out to a broader audience,
through launching an Arabic speaking scientific channel
to motivate people to get interested more in science,
and to prepare the financial conditions
in order to help them, guide them in order to do science.
And this is by creating grants and scholarships.
In the Syrian Researchers, we are at the beginning of a long road.
We have [to fight] a battle against the ignorance.
And we don't pretend to say that we know everything.
A scientist, by definition, doesn't understand
what he or she is trying to understand.
We share with our people
what we have learnt from you, from your universities,
here in Italy, in Europe, in the whole world;
we are trying to show our students over there an example to follow.
Charles de Gaulle, the founder of the French Republic,
had said once, during a crisis,
"In France, we don't have oil, but we have ideas."
Here I want to say something. We are people that are really smart.
Believe me we are smart.
And we have something much bigger than just oil.
We have as well the ambition to achieve our ideas.
Now think what we can do with all of that.
Behind me, you can see the pictures of all my colleagues.
Not all of them, unfortunately.
Here, I want you think five seconds. Just five seconds.
From everyone of you here,
from everyone who's going to watch this video to think five seconds
about what they are doing.
Some of them are living in the focus of the world.
Some of them don't have electricity,
don't have an Internet connection for long [hours in a] day.
But because they believe that the world
that we are living today is the fruit
of the lack of knowledge, of ignorance,
they have all decided to fight
within a new kind of fight.
It's a fight where we can show
a new face, a better face of our countries
not the face that you are used to see,
[but] a face we can be proud of.
A face which is knowledge and not ignorance.
Thank you very much, thank you.
(Applause)