Having described what he saw as Islam’s Golden Age, which he seems to think lasted until the 15th century, though historians agree that it lasted only from the 8th to the 10th centuries, Mahathir Mohamed continued his keynote address with still more of his idiosyncratic history:
Then around the 15th Century of the Common Era, the Muslim civilisation declined. They neglected all acquisition of knowledge other than that on Islam. Scholars of Islam came up with differing interpretations. The result is the formation of differing sects at odds with each other.
Hadn’t Muslim civilization been declining for several centuries before that? Don’t we measure that civilizational decline from the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols, under Hulagu Khan, in 1258, and the destruction of the Abbasid Dynasty and its enlightened court? Mohamed is right to note that Muslim intellectual interests narrowed to the study of Islam, with those 50-volume commentaries on the Qur’an, and those endless analyses of the chain of transmission (isnads) of the hadith – the stories about Muhammad’s sayings and deeds – in order to determine how reliable they were likely to be. This was a colossal expenditure of mental energy by Muslim scholars on what many of us regard as sterile quarrels. Did Muhammad really say to Habab ibn Bishr what Ibrahim al-Ansari said he did, or did he say it to claims he did, or did he say it to Khalid ibn al-As? Or could it be that the isnad-chain is so suspect, that Muhammad may just possibly not have said it at all? And which of his nine wives and two concubines did Muhammad favor? wives? And what were the precise words that Muhammad used to express his satisfaction when he learned of the death of Asma bint Marwan? How did they differ from what he said when he learned of the death of Ka’b ibn al-Ashraft? And just how hard did Muhammad punch Aisha in the chest? Subjects for endless discussion and dispute.
Again Mahathir Mohamed makes a bizarre remark. He claims that around the 15th century, “scholars of Islam came up with differing interpretations. The result is the formation of differing sects at odds with each other.”
The great sectarian division in Islam, that between the Sunnis and the Shi’a, did not begin in the 15th century but dates back to the first century of Islam. So does the Ibadi sect, now found mostly in Oman and in some oases in Algeria, which dates from 650 A.D. The Sufis emerged, similarly, not in the 15th century, but at least 500 years before, during the so-called “Golden Age of Islamic Civilization.” What sects emerged in the 15th century due to the “differing interpretations” of, presumably, passages in the Qur’an? Mahathir Mohamed doesn’t say.
Muslims lost their countries. They were dominated by European powers. They become colonies of the Europeans.
This repeated insistence that Muslims “lost their countries” and were “dominated by European powers” from the 18th century on has already been discussed in Part 2. It was pointed out that it was the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire that “dominated” the Middle East and North Africa for most of that period. The Europeans – England and France – remained in the Middle Eastern countries only for a few decades, as Mandataries – that is, holders of Mandates, not colonizers. France was the Mandatary for Syria and Lebanon, Great Britain the Mandatary for Palestine and Iraq. The Europeans never dominated Iran, or Turkey, or Saudi Arabia. In North Africa, the French had protectorates in Morocco and Tunisia, but the only true colony was Algeria, from 1830 to 1962. Mahathir Mohamed’s attempt to blame the “European powers” for being “colonists” who prevented the development of the Muslim countries will not wash.
So, if the future remains as we are now, we will suffer continuous oppression – we will decline further and our great religion will be denigrated as a religion of failure, of oppression and terrorism.
Mahathir Mohamed speaks of “continuous oppression” being suffered by Muslims. That takes some gall. He has apparently forgotten that In his own country, Malaysia, the only people who are oppressed are the industrious Chinese and Hindus, who are forced to share their wealth with the Muslim Malays through the “bumiputra” system, which — among many other unfair provisions — allows Muslims to acquire equity in non-Muslim enterprises at preferential rates. Where do Muslims now suffer continuous oppression? Only in China — not in any country in the West. By the tens of millions, Muslims have been allowed to settle in Europe and North America. In the generous welfare states of Western Europe, they have taken full advantage of every possible benefit: free or heavily subsidized housing, free education, free medical care (far beyond what is attainable in Muslim states), unemployment benefits (even without having had to have been employed), family allowances, and more. How are they oppressed? Despite the many terror attacks by Muslims all over the world, in the West there have been no roundups or mass expulsions, and the political and media elites make every effort to minimize the role of Islam in these attacks; some news reports even deliberately fail to identify the perpetrators as Muslims; many among our elites continue to insist, along with Pope Francis, and despite all the contrary evidence, that “authentic Islam” has “nothing to do with violence.”
Mahathir Mohamed’s despair over the state of Islam is warranted. Everywhere in the world, the behavior of Muslims has eroded whatever naïve good will toward them may have once existed. Their refusal, or even inability, to integrate into the Western societies that have welcomed them, and treated them so well, has had its effect. More Unbelievers are turning to the Qur’an to discover what it is that explains Muslim behavior. There they discover more than 100 verses commanding violent Jihad against the Infidels, and also find declarations of contempt and hatred for all non-Muslims. Believers are told that they are the “best of peoples” (3:110) while Unbelievers are described as “the most vile of created beings” (98:6). And the Unbelievers realize that those many verses commanding Jihad, and the verses that express hatred for them as the “most vile of created beings,” explain that contempt for our laws, customs, and mores. And they understand, too, the contempt many Muslims display for Infidel women, who “deserve what they get” at the hands of Muslim men, including those grooming gangs of Muslim sexual predators who have ruined the lives of tens of thousands of English girls. Western Infidels are waking up to the permanent menace; alarmed, they find intolerable the establishment of No-Go Zones by Muslims, who have carved out territories in major cities in Europe where even the firemen now need police protection, and the police themselves enter only in groups.
Prime Minister Mohamed fears that “our great religion will be denigrated as a religion of failure, of oppression and terrorism.”
Failure? Let’s see. Despite receiving nearly $27 trillion in unmerited income since 1973, the result of an accident of geology, the Arab oil states and Iran have not created modern economies. They have failed to diversify their sources of revenue; the Arab Gulf states, in particular, count on oil and gas for 90% of their revenues. They rely, too, on foreigners to do all the work; in Qatar, 90% of the population consists of non-Qataris who work at everything from building those endless skyscrapers that define Doha, to serving as teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, salesmen, while the 10% who are Qataris are content to be waited on in this rentier economy. In Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E, and Kuwait, the percentage of foreigners in the population is more than 80%, and it is still the same story as in Qatar: the foreigners do the work, while the indigenous Arabs either do not work at all, or have undemanding government jobs that require them to show up at an office for only 2-3 hours a day; foreigners do all the heavy lifting in the Saudi economy. In Saudi Arabia, economists estimate that only 30% of Saudis work at all, and almost all of that 30% works for the government; the private sector is too demanding. Yes, that is what one should call a “failure” of Islamic societies, a failure of the religion to inculcate the habit of work.
What about “oppression”? Mohamed means “oppression of Muslims by non-Muslims.” But aside from the Chinese “re-education” camps for Uighurs, and Myanmar‘s expulsion of the Rohingya, there is no “oppression” of Muslims. They have been admitted into our countries, generously treated, and so far suffered no repercussions for their behavior, from thousands of deadly terror attacks to grooming gangs, to No-Go Zones, to microaggressions of every sort.
If there is “oppression” of Muslims, save for the cases of the Uighurs and the Rohingya, almost all of it comes from fellow Muslims. The Kurds in Iraq have long been oppressed by the Arabs; 182,000 of them were murdered by Saddam Hussein’s Arab army in Operation Anfal. Muslim Turks also oppress the Kurds in Anatolia, who would like less repression by the army, recognition of the Kurdish language as being on a par with Turkish, and a greater degree of autonomy. In Saudi Arabia the majority Sunnis deal harshly with any sign of dissent from the Shi’a minority who live in the oil-bearing Eastern Province. In Bahrain, the ruling Al-Khalifa family has suppressed, with the help of Pakistani troops, the Shi’a protesters who make up 75% of their subjects. In Iran, the Sunni Balochis in eastern Iran are persecuted by the Shi’a government. In Pakistan, both the Shi’a and the Ahmadis live in fear of Sunni terror groups that have attacked and murdered members of both sects. In Algeria, the shadowy government of Arabs known as “le pouvoir” (“the power”) has long tried to suppress the Berber language and culture, and only recently was Berber recognized, after many protests in Tizi-Ouzou and other Berber cities, as a national language. The inattention to Berber culture, however, continues as the Arabs pursue their historic policy of Arabization. These are only some of the most obvious examples of Muslims oppressing Muslims, over differences of sect or ethnicity; there are many others.
And then there is the third aspect of present-day Islam that Mahathir Mohamed fears damages the image of the faith: “our great religion will be denigrated as a religion of failure, of oppression and terrorism.” “Failure” — see above. “Oppression” – see above. As for “terrorism,” who can deny it? There have been over 36,000 terror attacks by Muslims since 9/11 alone. All over the Western world Muslim terrorists have struck, and with each attack more people see Islam as the menace it is, and that common-sensical recognition is exactly what Mahathir Mohamad most fears.
Muslim terrorists have struck all over Europe, in Madrid and Barcelona, in Paris (many times), in Toulouse, Tours, Nice, Magnanville, and St. Etienne du Rouvray, London (many times), Manchester, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Wurzburg, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Malmö, Helsinki, Turku, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Beslan.
And in the United States, too, Muslim terrorists have attacked in Washington, New York (many times), Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, Little Rock, Chattanooga, Orlando.
For those, who have been paying attention, Islam is indeed, despite the fervent hopes of Mahathir Mohamed that it be see otherwise, a “religion of failure, of oppression, and terrorism.”
In sum:
The “failures” of Islam, economically and politically, are not the result of outside malevolent powers, European colonizers, or Zionist schemers. It is Islam’s reliance on authority, and discouragement of free and questioning inquiry, that stunts mental growth and, in particular, undermines the enterprise of science. It is Islamic fatalism – everything depends on the whim of Allah — that dampens economic activity, for why try so hard when in the end, Allah withholds or dispenses his bounty as he sees fit? That inculcated obedience to authority has political consequences, too – it makes despotism the default political system. After all, Muhammad himself, the Perfect Man and Model of Conduct, was a military warlord and a despot. Where democracy has been tried in a few Muslim states, it hasn’t lasted long enough for Western-style democracy to take root. Out of 57 Muslim states, none are full democracies, and only three states are today what The Economist calls “flawed democracies” (with low participation in the electoral process, media censorship, intimidation of political rivals, and an absence of freedom of speech and assembly, as these are understood in the West). These three “flawed democratic” states are Bangladesh, since 1990, Pakistan, since 2013, and Indonesia, since 1999.
The “oppression” of Islam of which Mahathir Mohamed refers is not, as he appears to think, mainly that of Muslims by non-Muslims, but is, rather, the oppression of Muslims and non-Muslims alike by Muslims. Sunnis oppress Shi’a in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt; Sunni Balochis fight Shi’a Persians in Iran; Arabs oppress Berbers in Algeria and Kurds in Iraq; Turks oppress Kurds in Turkey; a Sunni ruler represses his Shi’a people in Bahrain; Arabs oppress Berbers in Algeria, and so on, in a display of every possible permutation and combination of sect and ethnicity. There is no sign that any of this Muslim-on-Muslim oppression is diminishing.
Finally, “terrorism” by Muslims against non-Muslims continues unabated, and will not diminish until Muslims themselves find a way to expunge or reinterpret the many Qur’anic verses that instruct them to “strike terror in the hearts” of the Infidels. And how likely is that?
“Failure, oppression, terrorism” do indeed define the state of Islam today. Let us hope that we, the inoffensive Infidels, manage to not be pulled down with it.