In a review of The Crisis of Islamic Civilization by Ali A. Allawi in Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2010 (via RaymondIbrahim.com), our keen-eyed former Jihad Watch colleague Raymond Ibrahim discusses the reality of Islam's vaunted "Golden Age," and some contemporary implications:
Allawi, who at various times was Iraqi minister of trade, minister of defense, and minister of finance following Saddam Hussein's overthrow, ends his book with a plausible conclusion--that, by nature, Islamic civilization must either subsume or be subsumed--but only after long swathes of tangents, contradictions, and loaded assumptions.As for the latter, Islam's purported golden age plagues Allawi, evinced by his obsession over "what went wrong?" He flatly rejects any answer that even remotely involves Islam per se as "patently absurd," arguing that Islamic civilization was at the vanguard of human progress in the medieval era. Of course, the oft-repeated and (overly-dramatized) question of "what went wrong?" is moot. It falsely assumes that if Islamic civilization was at the vanguard of progress in the medieval era, it should be so now.
Begrudging the West's meteoric rise, this position ultimately implies that Islam's birthright was somehow usurped. Yet just because Muslims refined the astrolabe--which, as with most Muslim accomplishments, was in the service of Islam (to fix prayer times), something even the most radical Muslim happily permits--does not mean Islam was destined to split the atom. Nothing went wrong. This becomes clear when one ceases comparing Islam to the West--ceases comparing apples with oranges--and compares Islam to itself, appreciating the many constants.
Numerous pages are devoted to exploring the thoughts of progressive Islamic thinkers, only to reveal their aberrancy vis-à-vis Shari'a norms and thus their failure to resonate with the Muslim masses. Indeed, Shari'a is the insurmountable wall, the dead-end that repeatedly foils Allawi's strategies or sophistries by his own implicit demonstrations.
Apologetics abound: Allawi minimizes the Islamic conquests; he trivializes the issue of blasphemy and apostasy charges, blaming the Western media for "sensationalizing" them; he portrays the dhimmi-status (existence as a subjugated religious minority) as something almost admirable; and there is a curious chapter questioning the West's apparently overdeveloped notions of human rights: "Muslims must themselves decide what human rights mean in Islam."...
Islam abandoned rationalism early in its history - once it had spent the intellectual capital of the civilisations it had conquered.
After that it was all downhill into the abyss of ignorance and obscurantism: http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/islamic-irrationalism-and-anti.html
"Islam abandoned rationalism early in its history ..."
Well, this is true. One can even date the period when rationalism was finally rejected by Islam. T"he turning point was the publication of
"The incoherence of the philosophers" by Al Ghazali.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers
In this book he rejects platonism and aristotelianism as embraced by the likes of Avicenna. It was extremely influential and made muslims scholars turn away from the greek philophical heritage, which was embraced by the west.
Muslim Inbreeding: Impacts on intelligence, sanity, health and society
http://europenews.dk/en/node/34368
How many Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine have been won by citizens of Islamic countries? Compare that number to Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine won by citizens of non-Islamic countries. Shocking, I know.
Exactly. Th enumber of Nobel Prizes won by Muslims in anything still numbers in single digits, whilst Jews alone won their 159th Nobel prize back in 2007. And ill-educated swemi-literate Muslims consider brilliant Jewish scientists, physicists and doctors as inferior pigs and apes. And to think that medicines and vaccines developed by Jews prevented the early deaths of these same ungrateful Muslims.
Exactly. The number of Nobel Prizes won by Muslims in anything still remains in single digits, whilst Jews alone won their 159th Nobel Prize back in 2007. And ill-educated semi-literate Muslims consider brilliant Jewish scientists, physicists and doctors as inferior pigs and apes. And to think that medicines and vaccines developed by Jews prevented the early deaths of these same ungrateful Muslims.
article states , " blaming the Western media for "sensationalizing" them; he portrays the dhimmi-status (existence as a subjugated religious minority) as something almost admirable; and there is a curious chapter questioning the West's apparently overdeveloped notions of human rights: "Muslims must themselves decide what human rights mean in Islam."...
Curious word sensationalizing, this now means reporting the facts. after all to muslims honor killings and gross abuses of religious minorities by muslims is a small matter that should never be reported because it show islam in a bad light. Any efforts to report this is sensational.
As for human right, to muslims , only the muslims have human rights, all nonmuslims have no rights to be even called human.
The general thrust of Raymond Ibrahim's book review is to counter Allawi's by now all-too-familiar refrain about Islam being robbed of credit for its alleged great contributions to civilization.
An irony Allawi will probably not catch is that the book is printed using modern computer-controlled technology, is sold and distributed using Internet-based order and payment methods developed under a Western Capitalist business model by such companies as Amazon.com (itself built and financed using a system of publicly traded shares on NASDAQ, which is a completely computer-based stock/warrant/options trading system), and is typically delivered via air by FedEx or UPS. Without this underlying infrastructure developed completely within the West, using methods that owe no acknowledgments whatsoever to Islam or anything that emerged from it, Mr. Allawi would not even be able to make his views known to the world.
The view by Allawi, which Raymond has brilliantly deconstructed, is apparently based on the deeply entrenched belief held by Muslims that Islam is being deprived of its self-proclaimed historic destiny to rule the world. This same attitude is on display in Fethullah Gulen's writings in such places as http://en.fgulen.com/the-statue-of-our-souls/1955-on-how-to-find-our-path which starts off:
"Since the day we were deprived of the inheritance of the Earth, the Islamic world has been in a heart-breaking plight, trapped between the weaknesses of the Muslims and the ruthless assaults of its enemies...."
And Ali Allawi is one of the best, one of those of the Baghdad elite who was privileged to study at the best Western universities and then to live in the West. If even he cannot look steadily and whole at Islam -- and he can't -- how very difficult for others, far more primitive, who never escape physically, to the mental freedom that is cultivated in that West.
The reason science is weak in Islam is that Allah is conceived after the image of an earthly tyrant whose will is so absolute that it is subject only to itself -- never to any law whatsoever, including scientific law. Islam's Allah is not a constitutional monarch subject to law. He is an absolute tyrant.
The Judeo-Christian conception of God is different. Human beings are made in Yahweh's image. God is a Father, we are his children. By that very fact there is, from one aspect, a kind of equality between Creator and created. We find Jews throughout history arguing with God, appealing to independent reason and independent justice.
Also, in the Judeo-Christian tradition God is primarily a Maker at the beginning, and we are to fulfill our godlike image by imitating God's creating and making ("be fruitful and multiply"). As Daniel Boorstin has pointed out, in Islam, Allah is much more a God of Fiat, of Command, than of Making. Human beings are not made in the image of Allah. They are made to be Allah's servants or slaves. Thus Boorstin writes that, "for a believing Muslim, to create is a rash and dangerous act."
With only 1/100th the population of Muslims, Jews have produced over 100 times the number of Nobel prizes in subjects like Physics, Medicine, Economics. A Jew is literally about 10,000 times more likely than a Muslim to produce a Nobel prize. (100 x 100 = 10,000)
But we know that all religions and cultures are the same, right? We know that there is no difference between the violence in the Old Testament and the violence in Islam's core texts, right?
The Nobel committee must be a Zionist conspiracy, just like 9/11 and the GZ mosque.
More on Allawi.
He authored the book "The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace" (2007), available on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Occupation-Iraq-Winning-Losing-Peace/dp/0300136145/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t . The editorial and reader reviews on the Amazon site are interesting and provide perspectives on Allawi.
"by nature, Islamic civilization must either subsume or be subsumed"
In fact Islam is already subsumed by the West. Islam is subsumed as a subset of archaic barbaric beliefs and practices long abandoned by the West and labelled 'history'.
Since Islamic culture is nothing other than an impoverished subset of Judeo-Christian culture, it cannot add anything to ours, it can only subtract and destroy.
Every aspect of present-day Muslim culture that appears to be different from our own is in fact already contained within our culture, though buried in the archives.
So all those primitive aspects such as tribalism, theocracy, punishment by amputations, repression of women, honor killings, blasphemy laws etc are quite familiar to us - but we've been there and done that and rejected it all centuries ago.
As with adolescent vandals, those who lack creativity can only express themselves by destruction, and Muslims are very good at destroying the products of other civilisations (known as 'Jahiliyya') .
If you look carefully at the process of Islamization of Europe, you'll see that nothing is being added (apart from babies and mosques), but much is being taken away. Almost every Muslim demand is culturally 'subtractive' rather than 'additive'. They want to remove pig statues, ban alcohol, curb free speech, and stop teaching art, music, drama, biology and other 'un-Islamic' subjects in schools.
The mere presence of Jihadists in the West reduces the quality of life, with security restrictions on travel, and kaffir women and children in Jihadist-infested cities unable to move and play freely for fear of sexual predators.
In contrast to the subtractive impacts of Jihadism on Western civilisation, Islamic clerics in in Dar al-Islam are paranoid about the addition of aspects of Western culture such as fashion, music, toys, cinema, art, science etc to their own, which they refer to as 'Westoxication'.
So, no matter what the multiculturalists tell us, Islam cannot bring 'cultural enrichment' to the West - it can only bring cultural impoverishment.
To say that Jihadist immigrants are worthless is to overvalue them. In fact they have a negative cultural worth, because their attempts to Islamify the West are an attempt to reduce the rich culture of a superior civilisation to a backward, depleted, restricted and primitive subset.
Although some foreign cultures are 'enriching' and bring new artforms etc, Islam is culturally impoverishing. All it can do is take away our liberty and restrict our freedom of expression.
Islam is medieval. We've been there, done that, rejected all that theocratic crap, then progressed through the Renaissance and Enlightenment and left Islam in the dust. http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/multiculturalism-does-islam-bring.html
Yet he bemoans modern Mecca's transformation into a "tawdry shopping strip"—obliquely finding Western influence.
So now the West is to blame for the condition of Mecca - when non-Muslims aren't allowed even to enter the city? I guess we somehow influenced all those pilgrims to hunt for souvenir shops.
Either that, or we somehow cast a spell over the place from afar, maybe from a satellite.
Moslem and "Moslem" Nobel Prize winners in the sciences:
1) Abdus Salam - Pakistani - Physics - 1979
His tombstone originally bore the inscription "First Muslim Nobel Prize Winner", but because he belonged to the Ahmadi sect, the Pakistani government considered him to be non-Moslem, and the "Muslim" was removed from the tombstone.
2) Ferid Murad - American - Medicine - 1998
Born in the U.S. to an Albanian Moslem immigrant father and an American Baptist mother, he was educated in Catholic schools, and baptized as an Episcopalian. So he obviously does not consider himself to be Moslem, but Moslems might say he was.
3) Ahmed Zewail - Egyptian - Chemistry - 1999
no qualifiers
So, at most three Moslem winners in the sciences, and maybe only one or two, depending on who's doing the counting.
A sound and important contrast you've made, traeh. The Judeo-Christian conception of a monotheistic deity allows for intellectual wrestling with such an entity. As examples, you have Job and Martin Luther engaging God in an upfront manner. By contrast, the Islamic conception of a monotheistic God can only result in submissive believers, bending without question or doubt to the will of a cosmic Orwellian tyrant and control freak.
Thus, any achievements in the early Islamic centuries were virtually always done in spite of Islam, not because of it (some art work excepted). Contra Christianity. Just as Muslims don't see how far superior in character Jesus was to Mohammed, so do they manifest a similar blindness with their conception of a Supreme Being in comparison to Jewish and Christian assessments of a transcedent and ineffable Creator. The wonder of it all to me is why more Muslims don't see how deficient Mohammed is to Jesus and Allah to the Jewish and Christian God. It's almost as though Muslims think, at least subconsciously, that a slave status is all they're entitled to. What a sad, self-defeating and pathetic religion Islam is. No wonder Arthur Schopenhauer referred to Islam as "that despicable doctrine."
Allah, from what I can tell is modeled after the classic oriental despot/tyrant. This is why they place so much emphasis on submission and total obedience.
It's the only way to stay alive when you're ruled by a tyrant.
Good analysis, traeh. But I would not be surprised if somewhere within the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences there is a committee to study how to modify their nomination and selection procedures to yield a more balanced representation. It must be embarrassing to the Swedes to see such a lop sided number of Jewish awards. Obama should appoint an envoy, preferably from Yale, to help guide the study so that it will produce a recommendation in line with modern progressive thinking. One problem they will have is that no amount of vote juggling will make a dent in the 10,000-to-1 imbalance, however. Perhaps they will just add a new prize that represents contributions to "Islamic Science" and hand out a hundred awards every year (like some American high schools are now handing out multiple valedictorians). /sarc
Little to add to all the high quality comments above, but picking up on Gulen's self-pity, this farrago of victimhood is worth a look from the godfather of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, the IIIT, Ismail al Faruqi:
"The world ummah of Islam stands presently on the lowest rung of the ladder of nations. In this century [20th], no other people have been subjected to comparable defeat or humiliation. Muslims have been defeated, massacred, robbed of their land and wealth, of their life and hope. They have been double-crossed, colonized and exploited; proselytized and forcefully or by means of bribes converted to other faiths. They have been moreover secularized, Westernized and de-Islamized by internal and external agents of their enemies... Victims of injustice and aggression on every count, the Muslims have been nonetheless vilified and denigrated in the representations of all nations. They enjoy the worst possible 'image' in the world today. In the present day mass media, for instance, the 'Muslim' is stereotyped as aggressive, destructive, lawless, terrorist, uncivilized, fanatic, fundamentalist, archaic, and anachronistic... The Muslim World itself is known only for its inner strife and division, its turbulence and self-contradictions, its wars and threat to world peace, its excessive wealth and excessive poverty, its famine and cholera epidemics. In the minds of people everywhere the Muslim World is the 'sick man' of the world, and the whole world is led to think that at the root of all these evils stands the religion of Islam."
As you reach for a drier hanky or a fresh box of tissues, be aware that the IIIT, dedicated to the Islamization of Knowledge, is a likely Muslim Brotherhood outfit that has hosted and supported Imam Rauf.
http://i-epistemology.net/attachments/1120_iok%20-%2015%20-%2051%20-%20Faruqi%20-%20IOK%20-%20problems%20-%20principles%20and%20prospective.pdf
Thanks very much for the link to the paper "Islamization of Knowledge."
What an ugly perversion this is of the whole concept of "knowledge." Yet, this document would seem to deserve very close study, for the same reason that bin Laden's utterances post 9/11 deserved study. It is the same reason that, when contemplating his plan of attack for an upcoming tank battle in WW II Europe, prompted George Patton to famously utter "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!"
There's a reason Sun Tzu is read in war colleges. Lovers of Western knowledge and freedom of inquiry need to develop a curriculum that includes documents like this to be able to anticipate and counter Islamic attempts to hijack the field of knowledge. They did it once before and appear ready to try to do it again. They need to be stopped before they can even get organized.
"Muslims must themselves decide what human rights mean in Islam."...
In other words, no change necessary. They like things the way they are.....
I'll leave the dicussion on the significance of the contribution by Islamic scholars to the Western Scientific Revolution to the better-informed. However,the tendency of Moslems to blame the West for the 800 year decline of Islamic civilization is self-pitying nonsense. Western Europe was still on the defensive when the Moslem world entered its eternal torpor, long before Europeans developed their technological superiority over the Islamic nations.
During the Napoleonic invsion of Egypt, Moslems recognized the technological lead of the West, some even visited Western Europe and observed the societies that produced those amazing products. Only a small minority realized that to modernize, Islam must be reformed.
Contrast that mindset with the Japanese and other East Asians who when faced with Western industrial power decided to industrialize, they were not paralyzed by a totalitarian superstition.
The factors that enabled the UK to produce the first industrial civilization are extremely complex and probably unique to British society of the time. So the idea that the Islamic world or India, for example, would have industrialized independently of the West is not supported by the evidence.
"Lovers of Western knowledge and freedom of inquiry need to develop a curriculum that includes documents like this to be able to anticipate and counter Islamic attempts to hijack the field of knowledge. They did it once before and appear ready to try to do it again."
Yes, you are right. We would be stupid to dismiss what to us might appear childish and petulant attempts to, as they immodestly put it, Islamize Knowledge. They are not laughing - nor should we be.
http://i-epistemology.net/e-books/toward-islamic-anthropology.html
http://i-epistemology.net
Joseph wrote:
How many Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine have been won by citizens of Islamic countries? Compare that number to Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine won by citizens of non-Islamic countries. Shocking, I know.
................
Joseph and Spirit of 1683, not only are there very few Muslim Nobel Prize winners, but many of those usually so designated were either non-practicing—essentially apostates—or were considered heretical by their more devout co-religionists. Nobelists include a victim of murder and another of attempted murder for these very reasons.
I went into this in some depth in a post from earlier this year, and I hope no one minds me re-posting my comments here:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/07/25-million-enraged-muslims-threatening-to-leave-facebook.html#comment-687341
Muslims should also love the fact that the first printing press active in Asia was a Hebrew language press in the Israeli city of T'sfat (Safed) in the early 1500s. It is interesting to note that nothing was printed in Arabic until the 1700s, and then only in opposition to voices among the ulema.
Thank you for the link. Explains a lot of Muslim behavior. Suspected a lot, but never thought it was that extreme.
"Lovers of Western knowledge and freedom of inquiry need to develop a curriculum that includes documents like this to be able to anticipate and counter Islamic attempts to hijack the field of knowledge..."
Actually, in historical studies, Western "open-mindedness" was what gave us the rosy picture of Islam in the first place. People with a shallow acquaintance with Islamic civilization and an axe to grind with Christianity saw the RELATIVE absence of anti-Jewish activity in Ummayad Spain and certain periods in Ottoman history as "proof" that Islam was more "tolerant" (I'm thinking of people like Ignaz Goldhizer); and these same thinkers were not quite ready to supposed that the "Islamic" world's preservation of the classical Greek heritage might have something to do with the face that the older, better-established communities of Jews and Christians back around 750-900 AD were resident in lands conquered by Islam (whereas the bulk of Western Christians at the time were recently converted Germanic peoples who had only a nodding acquaintance with Mediterranean high culture).
Perhaps the accomplishments of the "Islamic Golden Age" should be named the "Dhimmi Golden Age"? Someone with more knowledge of the Middle East between the First Four Caliphs and the Turkish onslaught help me out.
Toby Huff in 'The Rise of Early Modern Science' (2003) touches on this question in a footnote:
"A likely explananation of it [dependence and decline], however, is to be found in the pattern of conversion to Islam over the centuries. For the first several centuries of the Islamic empire, the percentage of subjects who were Muslims in many areas of the empire remained less than a majority. It was not until about the tenth century that the preexisting communal structures of the non-Islamic peoples were weakened so that widespread conversion to Islam took place. Accordingly, the tenth century marks a turning point when rates of conversion soared, and with this new wave of conversion to Islam, the percentage of freethinkers who were not fearful of the corroding effects of the foreign sciences also dramatically declined, and this dynamic probably had negative consequences for the pursuit of the natural sciences and intellectual life in general." (p.47)
If you can buy, borrow, beg or burgle a copy of this, and also of Brockelmann's 'History of the Islamic Peoples' do so. In the latter we find:
"[Caliph] Ma'mun [786-833] had done a great deal for Islamic culture during the twenty years of his residence in Baghdad by his personal interest in Greek science. The study of this in the Syrian monasteries had never entirely died down [...] Although the Alexandrian school of medicine, with its philosophic spirit, had died out after the Arab conquest, which cut it off from Byzantium, Syrians in Antioch and Harran continued to foster its tradition, and transplanted it to Baghdad. [...] In Baghdad, Greek medicine encountered Indian. Harun ar-Rashid himself had once summoned Mankah, an Indian physician to Baghdad, and the Bamakids had had Indian medical works translated into Arabic. All these interests [Islamic and foreign] now received sympathetic patronage from Ma'mun." (pp.124-5)
Raymond Ibrahim: Did the West usurp Islam's scientific/cultural birthright?
.................
Excellent article by Raymond Ibrahim. Ali Allawi shows a complete failure to understand the nature of knowledge, its transmission, and its application.
Knowledge may have a history and a legacy, but it cannot be "usurped"—it is available to anyone who would apply it.
In the past thirty years or so, a number of nations started to thrive. These nations were situated in many different parts of the world and had different cultures.
South Korea had always been a much better place to live than North Korea, but in the last twenty years or so, it has become a first-world nation, with a standard of living almost as high as neighboring Japan, while North Korea has a population that has at times been literally starving.
Thailand—despite some political upheaval and a vicious Muslim insurgency in its south, has pulled so far ahead of its authoritarian—mostly communist—neighbors in South East Asia—even as she had been taking in large numbers of destitute refugees from surrounding countries in the 1970s through the 1990s.
Taiwan—a tiny nation politically disenfranchised by the world in favor of Communist China in the 1970s, nonetheless has thrived in the past twenty years.
India changed some of her socialist-leaning policies about twenty years ago, and—though still plagued with poverty in some quarters, has seen her standard of living skyrocket—pulling far ahead of neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The above are some of the economic "Asian Tigers".
I could list other examples, such as Ireland, Israel and Chile. Every nation above became freer and more open to business, technology, and education.
There is *nothing* to stop the Muslim world from doing the same thing—nothing but Islam. Islam will keep pulling the Muslim world into the morass of ignorance, violence and poverty.
As I have pointed out here before, it is the most "Islamic" Muslim countries which are the biggest economic basket cases.
Turkey, with its Kemalism curbing the worst of Islam, Indonesia and Malaysia with their large Indian and Chinese populations, have been among the most comparatively successful of Muslim countries, but Islam is always pulling them back.
Turkey is becoming Islamized under Erdogan, Malaysia with its discriminatory "Bamiputra" system, and Indonesia with increasing violence against Infidel minorities and creeping Shari'ah, do not bode well for these nations' futures.
And the most Islamic nations—where Shari'ah is the law of the land, where there are few or no Infidels to leaven the omnipresence of Islam—like Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia—the collapse is almost complete. One of Somalia's few steady sources of income are foreign aid and *monies received for ransomed victims of pirate kidnappings*.
As for Islam's purported golden age—much of that came from the efforts of those conquered by Islam—Infidels and recent converts—Jews, Christian north Africans, Byzantine Christians, central Asian Buddhists, Persian Zoroastrians, and Indian Hindus.
They eventually were murdered outright by Muslims; were able to flee Dar-al-Islam; were eventually ground down by the humiliations of dhimmitude; or succumbed to pressure and converted to Islam, and became infused with that creed's terrible fatalism, hatred of the mind, and intellectual incuriosity.
The "golden age" was over.
My greatest concern is that Islam will indeed find a new "golden age" for itself—not by reforming its own lands, but by seizing the West. Can you imagine the "golden age" Islam could make for itself out of the whatever is left after the destruction of Europe?
Islam could probably run on its shear wealth and innovation for a century or two before it managed to crush the momentum for good, and then would start looking for new victims.
From Serge Trifkovic, 'The Sword of the Prophet':
"The fruits of attempted escape from the shackles of natural morality are as predictable as they are grim, for the Muslims no less than for their victims: both are enslaved, brutalized and dehumanized by Islam.
"The all-pervasive lack of freedom is the hallmark of the Muslim world.
"Discrimination against non-coreligionists and women of all creeds,
racism,
slavery,
virulent antisemitism,
and cultural imperialism
can be found – individually or in various combinations – in different cultures and eras.
"Islam alone has them all at once, all the time, and divinely sanctioned at that.”
"There is no presumed equality of different people’s claim to life, liberty or any pursuit at all in Islam.”
And in the early 20th century a Roman Catholic priest who had spent years in India, mostly working among and observing Muslims, Fr J L Menezes, said this:
"The Mahommedan religion on the whole with all its dogmatic and moral principles, and with all its positive and negative laws has been a curse to human society.
"Mahommed pretended to confer by his religion a boon, at least on his own countrymen, by giving them in place of gross idolatry a purer faith, and surer moral habits, but in this attempt he has miserably failed and has hopelessly fallen into the very sin he so vehemently assailed.
"Mahommedanism has penetrated into barbarous countries and has forced its inhabitants to accept it as their saving religion, but in doing so it has not succeeded in elevating man’s condition to a higher level – or at least to a level any higher than that of Arabia in Mohammed’s time.
"The Partial and specious reforms which it may have attempted to effect, are vitiated by the fact that they tend to exclude the higher and nobler virtues;
"and as their inner life of families, the whole, the whole tone of society and the intellectual and moral standard of a people depend on the principles of the ruling religion,
"it is hopeless to expect that Islam will ever cease to be what it hitherto proved, the most formidable obstacle to the dawn of a progressive and enlightened civilization.
"How can it be otherwise?
"No permanent house can be built on a foundation of sand;
"what permanent civilization and progress then can be expected from a people professing a religion founded on fatalism, polygamy and slavery?
"Their blind belief in inevitable fate, and their antagonism to liberty of thought and action have rendered reform next to impossible;
"and the professors of this religion seem never to realize their obligation and duty towards the people under their rule, of spreading true civilization, good government and the cultivation of the peaceful arts.
"The natural consequence of this ignorance and blindness has been despotism, mal-administration, bigoted persecution and oppression of their co-religionists.
"In the countries of the Mahommedan world
"anarchy, rapine, revenge, strife and murder are the order of the day,
"thieving, lying, usury and oppression are looked upon more as virtues than vices;
"unrestrained licentiousness is carried to unimaginable excess.
"Dirt and filth are things that never come seriously before the attention of Mahommedans;
they seem indeed to prefer living in the most dirty and filthy environment.
"They are generally illiterate and at the same time self-conceited
"and their vainglory in their religion and the nothingness of their own acquirements makes them scorn every other religion;
"the meager education which they generally receive when young, makes them believe that there is not much left for them to learn in the world.
"In short, Mahommedan countries are the chosen homes of
"ignorance, bigotry, tyranny and brutal vice,
and rendezvous for a filthy, unprincipled people, as well as for brigands, felons and freebooters.
"While all other countries not influenced by Islam have made rapid progress in every direction and enjoy the blessings and peace of true civilization,
"Mahommedan countries have remained absolutely opposed to change and reform;
"nay, rapacity and extortion have reduced them to a most deplorable state.{sounds like he's talking about Somalia, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, doesn't it? - dda}
"Such is the boon conferred on human society by the Mahommedan religion, and what a benefactor Mahommed has been to his country!
"Who was pleased to give to his country, nay, to the whole world, a religion which,
claiming a divine origin as the final and irrevocable standard of morality,
"has kept its followers sunk in ignorance and barbarism, and has become an insuperable barrier to the regeneration, civilization and progress of the Eastern world.”
THE LIFE AND RELIGION OF MOHAMMAD. By J. L. Menezes. (Roman Catholic Books, P.O. Box 2286, Fort Collins, Colo. 80522, 1912/2005 reprint), p. 140.
Islam's not completely behind us. I mean, when it comes to stoning people to death they're lightyears ahead of the west.
yeah, I believe it's been developed into a real science. Perhaps stoning is not the norm in genteel Muslim society but enough so for Tariq Ramadan to suggest a moratorium as if we are talking about reasonably civilized people and not ignorant tribesmen.
I recommend Sean's link to a nice little essay on Islamic irrationalism and anti-rationalism .
"God is the primary cause of everything, and there are no secondary causes. Therefore, what may seem to be "natural laws," such as the laws of physics, gravity, etc., are really nothing more than God's customs, which He is at complete liberty to break or change at any moment."
"The catastrophic result of this view is the denial of the relationship between cause and effect."
Al-Ghazali: "reason is so infected by man's self-interest that it cannot know moral principles; they can only be known through revelation."
The pre-eminence of al-Ghazali in Islamic thought lead to the stagnation of further inquiries into science and philosophy from undogmatic points of view. When European thought took off if the opposite if anything happened in the Muslim world.
"My greatest concern is that Islam will indeed find a new "golden age" for itself—not by reforming its own lands, but by seizing the West. Can you imagine the "golden age" Islam could make for itself out of the whatever is left after the destruction of Europe?
This is indeed what is happenning. Islam's relationship to the lands of immigration is entirely parasitic, and eventually the parasite will kill its host: http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/islamic-parasites.html
Thank to the Enlightenment period, the West moved away from rabid Christian antisemitism that blamed the Jews for Black Death that ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages, even though not far enough to prevent the Holocaust.
Alawi despite his broad perspective, does not offer any hope for enlightenment, evolution or reformation. As a Muslim, Alawi bemoans and despairs as he himself does not see any hope for the future of Islam. I sympathize with his predicament but remain cautious.
1)
Einstein said: “The development of science and of creative activities of the spirit requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarianism and social prejudice.” Patents are evidence such creative activities: new drugs, electronics, satellites, the internet, food processing, cars, planes -- everything we need to live better lives:
Total patents held in 2008? 3.8 million:
-US owns 2.1 million.
-All muslim nations combined own 1,000 (among 1.4 billion people!).
2)
-US Nobel science prizes last 50 years? 71; ALL muslim nations? 3.
-US+UK universities? 3,600; Muslim universities? 600 (for 1.5 billion people).
-The UN’s HDI ranks nations by life expectancy, literacy, education and GDP per capita: 88% of the top 50 are Judao-Christian, encompassing 700 million people; Muslim nations? .09%, 5 million people.
-Books translated per/million people in Spain=920, Israel=380, Arabia=4.
-Tunis Arab League: 76%, ages 15-45, are illiterate.
-50% arab women can't read
3)
“IQ and the Wealth of Nations,” by Irish and Finnish scientists, found a correlation between a nation’s IQ and GDP. It includes a list of nations ranked by IQ. Muslim nations are at the bottom, with Turkey the highest, at 39th. A number of Asian nations (including China and Japan) outscore Western nations but most of the top tier are of Judao-Christian cultures.
4)
The National Academy of Science, 2008: Human evolution is happening OVER 100 times faster than previously thought. Did Islam halt evolution among its adherents? In fact, 8th century Islamic stasis is what Muslims seek. Might this mean that muslims haven’t evolved for 1,400 years which, by the old evolutionary standard, would be 140,000 years (100x1,400 years since Mohamed)? Is that why Muslim nations are still such unthinking primitives? They haven’t evolved since Mohamed lived?
(Isn’t 140,000 years ago about the time that Neanderthals lived -- true, only in Europe, but still…?)
Might this be why Islam counts among its adherents, generally, the least most illiterate, primitive people in humam populations?