RFK JR. SAYS ARABS DON’T PRODUCE SCIENCE. HERE ARE THE RECEIPTS.

By Verum Network | 28 October 2026

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faces widespread criticism after telling a Republican campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on 26 October: “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world. And yet they don’t produce science.” He went on to say Arabs “don’t win the Nobel Prize”, the Fields Medal or the Wolf Prize, and “don’t produce literature” (The New Republic; AP).

The public record of prizes, discoveries and books contradicts every part of that claim.

What RFK Jr. said about Arabs at the Grand Rapids rally

Kennedy was speaking for Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who has accused his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed has denied the allegations and disavowed the group (Newsweek).

In the same speech, Kennedy praised the scholarship of the past: “They were the first to make books and they, in the thirteenth century, typical Muslim princes had more books in their libraries than in all of Europe.” He then claimed that “all of that tradition has been destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood” (The New Republic).

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 (AP). Every modern laureate below won after that date.

Omar Yaghi: Palestinian refugees’ son wins the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Omar Yaghi, born in Jordan to Palestinian refugee parents, shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson for developing metal-organic frameworks. These materials can capture carbon dioxide, store gases and harvest water from dry air (UC Berkeley). In 2018 he won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, another award Kennedy named.

Ahmed Zewail: the Egyptian scientist who founded femtochemistry

Ahmed Zewail used ultrafast lasers to observe chemical reactions on the scale of femtoseconds, millionths of a billionth of a second. He won the Wolf Prize in 1993 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999. Scientist Peter Hotez, who served as a US science envoy alongside him, said Zewail “would disagree” with Kennedy (AP).

Michael Atiyah and Moungi Bawendi: Fields Medal and Nobel winners of Arab descent

British mathematician Michael Atiyah, the son of a Lebanese father and a Scottish mother, won the Fields Medal in 1966. He later shared the 2004 Abel Prize with Isadore Singer (MacTutor, University of St Andrews). In 2023, Moungi Bawendi, whose father is Tunisian, shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and development of quantum dots (MIT).

Naguib Mahfouz and Jokha Alharthi: Arab literature’s Nobel and Booker winners

In 1988, Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz became the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. His Cairo Trilogy is one of the most celebrated works of modern Arabic fiction. In 2019, Omani novelist Jokha Alharthi won the International Booker Prize for Celestial Bodies, translated by Marilyn Booth. In 2025, Lebanese-born Rabih Alameddine and Egyptian-born Omar El Akkad won the US National Book Awards for fiction and nonfiction (The New Arab).

Tawakkol Karman: the first Arab woman to win a Nobel Prize

Yemeni journalist and activist Tawakkol Karman shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, the first Arab woman to receive a Nobel. Egypt’s Mohamed ElBaradei won the Peace Prize in 2005, jointly with the International Atomic Energy Agency he led (AP).

Algebra, algorithms and optics: the Arabic-language scientific tradition

The word algebra comes from the Arabic al-jabr, from the title of a book al-Khwarizmi wrote in Arabic in ninth-century Baghdad. The word algorithm derives from the Latin form of his name. Born in Khwarazm in Central Asia, he worked within a scientific tradition that drew in Arabs, Persians, North Africans and others (MacTutor).

Ibn al-Haytham, born in Basra in the tenth century, made foundational contributions to optics and experimental method (UNESCO). Ibn al-Nafis described pulmonary circulation (PubMed). Al-Zahrawi’s medical encyclopedia documented surgical techniques and instruments (UNESCO). Al-Idrisi produced an influential world map in twelfth-century Sicily (Yale).

Fatima al-Fihri is credited with founding al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, in 859. It began as a mosque and centre of learning, and Guinness World Records recognises it as the world’s oldest continuously operating educational institution.

CAIR calls for RFK Jr. to be fired over his anti-Arab remarks

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for Kennedy’s firing, describing the remarks as “fabricated, white supremacist talking points” (TRT World; CAIR). Jenin Younes, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called them “blatant anti-Arab bigotry, not to mention factually inaccurate” (The Independent via Yahoo). Brad Woodhouse of Protect Our Care said it “may be his ugliest episode yet” (AP).

Kennedy has not apologised. His response: “Mike Rogers was talking about the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s something I can talk about.” HHS did not respond to requests for comment (AP).

Arab, not Muslim: why the distinction matters

Arab is an ethnic and linguistic identity, and Muslim is a religious one. Most Muslims in the world are not Arab, and many Arabs are not Muslim (AP). Kennedy targeted Arabs as a people, then explained their supposed failure through a religious political movement. Both halves of the claim collapse against the record.

The record, and the question it leaves

No single prize settles a question about an entire region’s science. But Kennedy did not make a careful argument about research funding or institutions. He described half a billion people in absolute terms, as a group that produces no science and no literature. The counterexamples stretch from 1966 to 2025, and they are public.

Kennedy made the claim. The record does not support it.