The Intolerably Silly Independent is currently carrying a farcical article* about the past scientific and technological glories of Islamic civilization, but the question of real interest is precisely what this article fails to address: why is it that a civilization which was capable of such achievements centuries ago became so thoroughly stagnant that fewer works are translated into Arabic than into Greek in any given year, despite the former having 5 20 times as many native speakers and yet even more who have learnt it in the course of their religious studies?** Why is it that the sum total of all books translated into Arabic in the last 1000 years is less than what comes out in Spain in a single year? How is it that the Muslim world, which never suffered the isolation from foreign developments that sub-saharan Africa did, nor was far removed from the course of events in Europe as countries like Japan, Korea, Thailand and China were, is now behind all these other countries* on so many indicators of development?
It's all very well that philosophers like Ibn Rushd and doctors like Ibn Nafis were doing all sorts of clever things 600-1000 years ago, but the very reason why one has to reach so far back into the past to come up with names to redeem Islam's lustre is the same one why poverty and ignorance are rife in the Muslim world today: the rationalist Islam of these past truth-seekers is not the Islam preached in Al-Azhar or embraced by Muslim populists or the Islamic masses anywhere at any time in history, and when the gates of ijtihad closed back in the medieval era, Islam's capacity for nurturing worthwhile original thought died with it. There's no point talking about Islam's compatibility with modern-day science when the kind of unorthodox thinking which secured the past advances one wishes to trumpet would now be enough to have one branded an "innovative" heretic and put to death. Scientific progress is utterly irreconcilable with religious literalism, especially when the religion is one which claims to have all the answers for every facet of human existence.
Puff pieces about long-vanished glories are a dangerous opiate for any people, whether they be late 19th century Chinese nationalists ruing the incursions of barbarians into the Central Kingdom, or early 21st century Muslims looking back on the halcyon days of Harun al-Rashid and the Alhambra; such notions are especially dangerous for adherents of a religion which has so fossilized that all critical examination of its central tenets is now off-limits to all but the most foolhardy believers, as all it does is lay the ground for a situation in which Muslims are continually encouraged in the hope that they can return to the greatness of the past without simultaneously being reminded of the obstacles they must overcome for this to become anything more than an idle dream; instead the inevitable failures are met with time and time again, and as Muslims are prevented from looking within for the explanations for their reversals on pain of imprisonment or death - and as self-criticism is hardly enjoyable even at the best of times - they will turn instead to blaming the "conspiracies" of "evil" outsiders like the Jews, the Western "Crusaders" or the American "Great Satan" for what would otherwise be inexplicable given the supposed perfection of their religion.
PS: See here, here and here for rebuttals of some of the grandiose claims made on behalf of Islam in the Indepedent article. That early modern Europe owed much of its revival to the learning transmitted by Muslim scholars is indisputable, but that doesn't give one licence to engage in dishonest apologetics on behalf of modern-day Islam by distorting the historical record.
That conquerers of some of the greatest civilizations on Earth, conquerers who happened to lie at the crossroads of other major civilizations, should have served to transmit knowledge from one culture to another isn't remarkable: what is remarkable is that a Muslim world directly abutting Europe should have missed out so completely on the intellectual and economic ferment which was occurring on the continent. Why is it that the nobility of Japan could accomplish what the Ottomans never could, and why is it that Turkey is now reduced to being just one of hundreds of supplicants for Japanese development aid, despite the first Turkish reform movement predating the Meiji "restoration" (a.k.a coup) by quite some time? The answer lies in Islam itself - in its sweeping claims on human thought and action, in its claims to inner perfection, and not least of all in the firm hold it has had for centuries on the minds of the great majority of Muslims; to illustrate, despite more than 150 years of efforts at top-down reform by Turkish rulers, the social, cultural and intellectual world of the typical Turkish villager still bears a recognizable resemblance to that of his early 19th century counterparts in a way that the world of even the most rurally isolated Japanese person does not.
*Thankfully, soon to vanish into oblivion due to said newspaper's archiving policy.
**This according to the UNDP's 2002 Arab Human Development Report.
***On measures of education, democracy, press freedom and women's rights, the Muslim world actually makes many an African state look good, incredible as it sounds.
"fewer works are translated into Greek than into Arabic in any given year"
From context, I think you mean the reverse?
Posted by: Andrew | March 13, 2006 at 08:47 PM
Yes. Thanks for the proofreading.
Posted by: Abiola | March 13, 2006 at 09:03 PM
"that fewer works are translated into Arabic than into Greek in any given year, despite the latter having 5 times as many native speakers and yet even more who have learnt it in the course of their religious studies?** "
Bit more proofreading: you've got a "latter" in there that wants to be a "former".
Posted by: Frank McGahon | March 13, 2006 at 09:57 PM
I'm developing "Matthew Yglesias Syndrome" in my old age ...
Posted by: Abiola | March 13, 2006 at 10:25 PM
You know, the accomplishments of medieval Arabs were fairly impressive, especially in the domains of optics and alchemy. But I simply refuse to take seriously anyone who says that "camera" comes from an Arabic word.
Posted by: Andrew Reeves | March 14, 2006 at 01:23 PM
The question is: why are these apologetics occurring? What agenda are they serving?
Posted by: Steve Edwards | March 14, 2006 at 01:31 PM
Can there be any doubt why? Some people simply refuse to believe that any negative labels can or ought to be allowed to attach to Islam, religion of the Poor and Oppressed Righteous Brown Masses.
Posted by: Abiola | March 14, 2006 at 01:45 PM
While we're on the topic of Islam and cultural achievement, it's worthwhile to note how Muslims have treated two of the three members of their religion (as opposed to 120+ Jews) to have been accorded Nobel Prizes*: Dr. Abdus Salam, winner of the 1979 prize in physics, was lambasted as a heretic and ostracized**, even being denied burial in his native Pakistan, while 1988 Literature prize winner Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck by a would-be assassin in 1994 for supposedly "insulting Islam", and subsequently lost use of his right arm. If this is the mark of a religion reconcilable with modernity ...
*Here I intentionally exclude the "Peace" prize which invariably goes to dupes and terrorists.
**See the following url for the disgraceful details.
http://www.drsohail.com/FOTH/Sept1004/Khalid_sohail.htm
Posted by: Abiola | March 14, 2006 at 01:52 PM
"Can there be any doubt why?"
No, your explanation is too innocent. I think their agenda is far more sinister than you are prepared to venture. I suspect a lot of "former" communists and their fellow-travellers are simply looking for another means to bring down the West, following the failure of the "workers' paradise" - and Islam serves as a useful proxy for them.
Posted by: Steve Edwards | March 14, 2006 at 09:09 PM
D-Squared, for example, is quite clearly a communist sympathiser.
Posted by: Steve Edwards | March 14, 2006 at 09:12 PM
Zewail repeats all the usual talking points:
http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study_res/zewail/zewail_interview.html
failing to address why Korea which was also colonized doesnt seem to have the problems of the Islamic world. In fact, were it not for what Japan \"imposed\" on Korea; where would it be today?
This kind of rubbish only serves to massage the egos of incapable Muslims, with such nonsense as \"reform from inside\" - which is all nice and good, until you realize that your insides are rotten and that you need new insides.
For all the much vaunted success of Malaysia - it is, in fact, not an Islamic success and neither is Qatar - but this dont make it into the talking points.
And dont you just love it when apologists for Islamic backwardness try to claim a centuries old rationalist tradition as theirs? Why - soon they\'ll be explaining why they arent emulating, in the present, all those great rationalist Islamic scholars who lived eons ago...
Posted by: Chuckles | March 14, 2006 at 09:43 PM
"For all the much vaunted success of Malaysia - it is, in fact, not an Islamic success"
Indeed. Without a Chinese minority to impose "bumiputera" policies on, where would the Malay majority be today? It tells you something that not even decades of complete domination of the political system and extreme affirmative action have managed to bring the Malays to anything near parity with the ethnic Chinese, and this despite the fact that Malaysia is no South Africa with its centuries of complete white subjugation of all other races.
Posted by: Abiola | March 14, 2006 at 10:15 PM
[...bumiputera...]
Yes, yes...Have you noticed? Great Islamic minds think alike! Perhaps this is what it means to be a successful Islamic State: Impose restrictions on those groups you think compete with you unfairly and claim Lordship privileges. The situation is Malaysia strikes a parrallel with the situation in Nigeria and elsewhere, where Muslims are allowed to dominate the political system. Must be a manifestation of dhimmitude or something...Notice of course, that all the discrimination against Southerners in the name of \"federal character\" has done about the same good for Northern Nigerians as Malaysian policies have for the bumiputra.
Posted by: Chuckles | March 14, 2006 at 10:42 PM
[D-Squared, for example, is quite clearly a communist sympathiser]
no I'm not.
[Without a Chinese minority to impose "bumiputera" policies on, where would the Malay majority be today?]
same place Europe would have been without the Jews?
Dubai really isn't bad, by the way, lads. It is the nature of development that it is something that either happens or doesn't, and there is no particular need to posit massive great structural explanations for the fact that the distribution of outcomes has a left as well as a right tail. Both the Independent article and your reaction to it look like cases of the fundamental attribution fallacy to me.
Posted by: dsquared | March 18, 2006 at 02:59 AM
"same place Europe would have been without the Jews?"
You know, it isn't clear if you're trying to damn the Malays or to praise them; it isn't as if Europe's record towards the Jews who contributed so much to it is anything to brag about ... In any case, Europe at least has a modern day history of free-thinking and respect for the scientific method, which is a lot more than can be said for any Muslim countries at present, even Turkey and Malaysia.
"It is the nature of development that it is something that either happens or doesn't, and there is no particular need to posit massive great structural explanations for the fact that the distribution of outcomes has a left as well as a right tail."
Yes, the income distribution in places like Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia - with Chinese on top and Muslim Pribumis/Bumiputras far down below them - is obviously just an accident of development, and has *no* structural underpinnings whatsoever; it's so accidental that it's even repeated itself three times in three different countries.
Posted by: Abiola | March 19, 2006 at 08:27 PM
[it's so accidental that it's even repeated itself three times in three different countries]
I am in danger of repeating myself on the example of the Jews in Europe; it is entirely possible for an economic outcome to be neither wholly accidental nor intrinsic to the nature of a specific race or religion. The Parsis are near the top of the income distribution in India, but they wouldn't have been without a very specific set of historical circumstances.
Posted by: dsquared | March 19, 2006 at 08:48 PM
"it is entirely possible for an economic outcome to be neither wholly accidental nor intrinsic to the nature of a specific race or religion"
What a copout - and who brought race into this anyway?
All sorts of things are "possible", but not all of them are probable, and to hear you say it, one would think the achievement gap between Hindu and Muslim South Asian immigrants were also just another accident of a "specific set of circumstances": the fact of the matter is that intellectual dissent is a risky business for Muslims, as anybody who isn't an ideologue or Rip Van Winkle can see for himself. Even your supposed example of Jewish achievement is utterly hollow: nobody who has more than a superficial familiarity with Jewish history will deny that post-Temple Judaism has harbored a powerful sense of respect for scholarship which is at the root of the Jewish scholastic excellence we see today.
Your "specific set of historical circumstances" is nothing more than a vague cop-out which attempts to camouflage the reality that *all* human culture, ideas and achievements are the product of "specific sets of historical circumstances", and as such to invoke this is to explain nothing at all. It's absurd to expect outsize achievement from a community whose dominant creed claims to have all truth and which threatens unorthodox thinkers with death, as is the reality throughout the Muslim world today, and indeed Muslim achievements are commensurate with this. If you have some deep, *concrete* insights into the malaise of the Muslim world that all the Muslim commentators who highlight this very point don't, come right out with it instead of referring to Parsis and suchlike.
PS: Here's how your enlightened religion, which is merely the victim of a "specific set of circumstances" [sic], treats dissent within its ranks.
http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/03/05/d603051503105.htm
Of course, I know that it's too much to expect any hard *facts* from you contradicting or "contextualizing" this report, other than the odd personal anecdote.
Posted by: Abiola | March 20, 2006 at 04:10 PM
[nobody who has more than a superficial familiarity with Jewish history will deny that post-Temple Judaism has harbored a powerful sense of respect for scholarship which is at the root of the Jewish scholastic excellence we see today]
Really? Who were all those illiterate Central European peasants who clogged up Ellis Island then? This special "powerful sense of respect for scholarship" is a retrospectively created myth, rather like the similar myth that Vietnamese immigrants have created about themselves.
[It's absurd to expect outsize achievement from a community whose dominant creed claims to have all truth and which threatens unorthodox thinkers with death]
Wahhabism is not the "dominant creed" in the Islamic community. I have made this point before to you; Osama bin Laden is *wrong* when he says that the majority of normal Muslims are apostates and you are wrong to the extent that you agree with him.
[If you have some deep, *concrete* insights into the malaise of the Muslim world that all the Muslim commentators who highlight this very point don't, come right out with it ]
I have come out with it on several occasions; a very big part of the reason for the malaise of the Muslim world is that its cultural centre and a large proportion of its population, happens to be located on top of some oil that we, the Culture of Enlightenment(tm) decided that we wanted. It was not so very long ago that places like Alexandria, Beirut and Dubai were prosperous, cosmopolitan cities and I don't think it's a coincidence that their decline happened at the same rough historic period that the first oil discoveries were made.
Every time I bring this up, though, the discussion tends to turn angry and sarcastic, and for some reason people start talking about "Bushitler".
Posted by: dsquared | March 20, 2006 at 05:11 PM
This one can be filed under "religion of peace":
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-03-18-voa7.cfm
Posted by: Steve Edwards | March 20, 2006 at 05:27 PM
"Every time I bring this up, though, the discussion tends to turn angry and sarcastic"
I'm sarcastic, yes, but that's because I find your attempts to deny the obvious ridiculous, as in *funny*: the only one angry about anything here is YOU, for being made fun of because of your insistence that 1+1=3.
Posted by: Abiola | March 20, 2006 at 05:43 PM
"It was not so very long ago that places like Alexandria, Beirut and Dubai were prosperous, cosmopolitan cities and I don't think it's a coincidence that their decline happened at the same rough historic period that the first oil discoveries were made."
I'm not sure why you chose these examples. Dubai was still pretty prosperous and cosmopolitan last time I looked (although it was barely more than a little village back at the time of the first oil discoveries), it's hard to see any connection between oil and the decline of Alexandria, a process begun long before oil was discovered, and Lebanon doesn't actually produce any oil although I do seem to remember it going through a pretty brutal civil war, involuntarily hosting part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and getting invaded and occupied by Syria but I'm sure you're going to tell me that here is some connection here to the Culture of Enlightenment's thirst for oil.
Incidentally, did it ever occur to you that a) oil is used quite a bit outside of the CoE and that b) the windfall represented by oil wealth may have baleful effects anyway which are completely unrelated to the identity of the final consumer of that oil?
Posted by: Frank McGahon | March 20, 2006 at 05:50 PM
[Incidentally, did it ever occur to you that a) oil is used quite a bit outside of the CoE and that b) the windfall represented by oil wealth may have baleful effects anyway which are completely unrelated to the identity of the final consumer of that oil?]
Don't recall saying otherwise.
[the only one angry about anything here is YOU]
presumably this is why I keep on writing posts on my blog clearly aimed at you without mentioning you by name?
Posted by: dsquared | March 20, 2006 at 08:45 PM
DSquared, men, You are paranoid.
Posted by: Chuckles | March 20, 2006 at 10:08 PM
Good call, Chuckles. "Ideas of reference," anyone? And even if I really *were* aiming my orbital mind control laser at Dsquared, it would hardly establish that I was "angry" about anything: it's not as if I'm the least inclined to hide my anger when I do feel it. Maybe I just like poking fun at people who refuse to abide by the laws of reason, imagine that!
Dsquared, knock off the dumb insinuations, old chap, the only emotion stirred up in me by your ever more implausible evasions of the facts about Islam is *mirth*; it's as if I were seeing one of those dialogues between Achilles and the Tortoise in "Gödel-Escher-Bach" being acted out in real life:
[Achilles: Do you accept premises A and B?
Tortoise: Yes.
Achilles: Do you accept that premises A and B imply conclusion C?
Tortoise: Yes.
Achilles: Therefore you DO accept conclusion C, right?
Tortoise: No. Why should I have to?]
Guess who's been playing the Tortoise on here ...
Posted by: Abiola | March 20, 2006 at 10:22 PM
[the only emotion stirred up in me by your ever more implausible evasions of the facts about Islam is *mirth*; ]
I find this frankly hard to believe; you repeatedly threaten to ban me from the site, delete my posts and swear at me. Since there are no other people who post on your comments threads regularly who don't believe in the global Muslim conspiracy I don't think it's unreasonable of me to assume your comments in this direction are aimed at me, particularly when several of them appear to specifically address arguments I've made to you. Perhaps it's all mirthful swearing and frivolous personal insults, but in that case I must inform you that you really can't do comedy at all.
Posted by: dsquared | March 20, 2006 at 11:06 PM