Five hundred million Arabs: The number RFK Jr used to deny Arab science

United States Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cited a population of five hundred million Arabs on Monday. He used that figure to argue that the group does not produce science or literature. The remarks came during a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Kennedy Jr. was supporting Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers. Rogers is facing off against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in a close race for the Michigan Senate seat. The election is scheduled for next week. Kennedy Jr. stated that Arabs do not win the Nobel Prize, the Fields Prize, or the Wolf Prize.

Critics described the comments as racist and factually incorrect. They pointed to specific historical and modern achievements by Arab scholars. The Islamic Golden Age, spanning roughly 750 AD to 1258 AD, saw Arabic become the primary language of science. Arab mathematicians adopted Indian numerals, including zero, and spread them globally.

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi is often called the father of algebra. He established the field as a separate discipline in his work, Al-Jabr. Ibn al-Haytham, known as the father of modern optics, explained how light enters the eye for vision. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, a surgeon from Andalusia, wrote a 30-volume medical encyclopedia and designed surgical instruments.

In more recent decades, several Arabs have received major scientific awards. Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. He remains the only winner who wrote in Arabic. Egyptian Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1999 for femtochemistry. Omar M Yaghi won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2025 for work on metal-organic frameworks.

Moungi Bawendi received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2023 for the discovery of quantum dots. Mohamed ElBaradei shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. Peter Medawar, born to a Lebanese father, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1960. Michael Atiyah won the Fields Medal in 1966.

Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez responded to the comments on X. He noted that Arab scientists preserved the works of Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen for the Renaissance. Broadcaster Mehdi Hasan called the remarks racist. He highlighted Omar Yaghi as a Palestinian-American winner of the recent Nobel Prize.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for Kennedy Jr. to be removed from office. The organization stated that erasing Arab contributions is maliciously false. It argued that the comments fan the flames of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate. The group described the behavior as disqualifying for a sitting cabinet official.