abu_rashid wrote on Sep 27^th, 2008 at 12:34pm:


Previously, Sappho wrote...

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And I am still waiting... waiting... waiting...

Whilst we are about it.... Why does the Muslim faith have so many illiterate believers?

Sappho,

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Since I've not made any assertion that Islamic/Muslim scientists have made many contributions since the period of decline, I'm not going to be bringing you much of an answer for this one.

It's very true that Muslims have made very few contributions to science since the decline, and when we consider that most Muslim countries are either being occupied, engaged in wars or too poor to even feed their own people, is it any wonder? Such conditions generally don't breed scientific discovery and innovation.

Since Lestat made the claim, I will leave it up to him to produce the results. I personally don't consider achievements by Muslims, who are not part of the Islamic civilisation, to be noteworthy anyway, and those made in non-Muslim countries can't even be counted as Islamic achievements, as they were made under the system and institutions of other civilisations, and should be rightfully credited to those civilisations. Likewise, I consider the achievements of Jews and Christians under Islamic civilisation, to have been Islamic achievements, not Jewish or Christian achievements, since it was Islamic civilisation that allowed them to occur.

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Firstly, I'd like to question what your intention is in making this [dubious] claim? Are you suggesting Muslims are Muslims as a result of their illiteracy, and therefore assumedly they embraced Islam out of ignorance? Islam has always considered education important, and has always encouraged a literate and well educated society. If we look at the records, we'll find that Islamic society under the Islamic civilisation was probably a lot more literate than Europe for instance. Compare for instance the fact that many Muslim children would attend their local mosque (which usually included a school also) to learn to read and write and to understand their sacred texts, when Europeans were pretty much forbidden from even possessing their sacred texts in their own colloquial languages.

Secondly, are you aware that there's 3 Muslim countries that have higher literacy rates than Australia?

Thirdly, more than half of the majority Muslim countries in the world have literacy rates above the weighted average literacy rate of 83.5%.

So please I'm interested to know what led you to believe that Muslims are so incredibly illiterate? No doubt there are predominantly Muslim countries with poor literacy rates, there's also predominantly Christian countries too.

Most Muslims do only what, they believe, Allah told them to do. This is evident from the fact that most, if not all, Muslims do nothing in their lives without first saying “Bismillah …” i.e. beginning everything in Allah’s name, without whose help, so they believe, they can achieve nothing in their lives.

Most of them spend a colossal amount of their valuable time on prayer to Him. Believing that mustering the teachings of the Qur’an is what they needed in their lives, they helped produce in the past, and are still helping produce, a large number of Islamic clerics, instead of good scientists and scholars of other subjects that are essential for the good, and the survival, of mankind. The following statistics throws a light on the state of the ‘man-given knowledge’ in the Muslim world:

There are 57 member-countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around 500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims. The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an 'Academic Ranking of World Universities, and intriguingly, not one university from the Muslim-majority states was in the top-500.

This clearly tells us that the Muslims lack in education; this being the result of their Islamic beliefs, as a consequence of which, over the past 105 years, only three Nobel Prizes have been won by about 1.4 billion Muslims (other than the Peace Prizes), while approximately 14 million Jews have won 180 Nobel Prizes during the same period.

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And you are yet to honour your claims regarding modern Muslims and science. Are you having trouble sourcing any Muslims of scientific note?

Sappho,

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Likewise non-Muslims from those regions tend to be in pretty bad shape also. I don't think their beliefs or lack thereof necessarily have a lot to do with it, which is what I think you were getting at. There's probably even some secular humanists in those regions too who are doing it tough, do you think it's at all related to their secular humanism?

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As you noted, Muslims have nothing current to reference. Our civilisation has vanished, Why do Mayans or Aztecs also not reference the great current achievements of their civilisations? Because there are none. My point was to show that Islam as an ideology promotes learning and education. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said "Seek knowledge even if you must travel to China".

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I don't think secular humanists can really be defined as holding a single core of beliefs that we could compare them to Muslims or Christians for instance. Although I agree the Western nations, who've mostly adopted secular ideals have prospered and advanced a great deal in the past few centuries. If you'd like, I can surely attribute it to their secualist ideals, certainly not Judaeo-Christian ideals.

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Perhaps if you could provide some figures on how many humanists there are in the world, we might be able to check the accuracy of this claim.

I can tell you this much, the Muslim countries that have over 99% literacy rates have total populations of around 50 million people, those that have over 90% have total populations of about 270 million, and so on.

Do you think humanists even number this many in the world (if we assume they are 100% literate)? If we can actually narrow down and define what a 'humanist' is?

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Since Asia is a very large area, and could include a lot of different places, your statement is a little vague. The 3 Muslim countries that I mentioned which have over 99% literacy are all in Asia. In fact pretty much all of the Muslim countries above the weighted average for literacy are in Asia. Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim country in the world, which is also in Asia has over 90% literacy.

Anyway as mentioned, I agree there's a lot of problems with Muslim society today, and education is one of them, but it might not be exactly what you think it is. I think poverty caused my government mismanagement is a much bigger problem. The governments in Muslim countries just have absolutely no care whatsoever for advancing their people. They are more concerned with getting their hand outs from the West, and this money is generally spent on their militiaries (which are pathetic anyway), and which are mostly aimed at their own populace, rather than at any perceived external threat. One really has to question the policy America giving so much money to dictatorships in the Middle East that do nothing but arm themselves against the possibility of civilian unrest. I'm not 'passing the buck' I just wonder if you actually know the situation in those countries? Did you ever goto an Arab country and see soldiers standing in guard towers with machine guns in the middle of the civilian population? All paid for (and often trained) by the Good ol' US of A. Police states don't produce scientists and enlightened people, they produce angry and violent people. They also help to keep the political situation to America's liking..

Amazing...in the very same post you go on about 'muslm superiority, then talk about how 'backward' muslims are. Is this not a reflection on your very own 'feelings of superiority'...or do your pathetic views only apply to muslims.

To what extent is it a statement of fact Les? Do you agree that most of the middle east is pretty backwardsnow and has been for a while? There has been a lot of talk about how (comparitively) advanced the middle east was for a while. IF you acknowledge that, why not acknowledge it's decline?

Since the Islamic civilisation was under heavy attack from all sides, I guess that's probably why they focused more on military matters rather than those of scientific discovery. Remember that Muslims were fighting with Christians to the west and Mongols and Tatars to the east.

There's a big difference between focussing on other issues and actively suppressing science and the work of scientists, not all of whom are going to drop their test tubes just because there's another war on the frontier. In fact, the military is often an important source of funding for research.

Scientific endeavour requires a certain level of peace and prosperity that was slipping away in the Muslim lands, whilst at the same time was opening up in Europe.

That's an interesting theory. Can you back it up with evidence? I've never thought of European history as peaceful.

with the fact that Islamic civilisation experienced a 700 year high during the period in which there was the least amount of secularisation

It was remarkably resilient, but I would also put a lot of this on external circumstances, like the taxes they could apply to trade - kind of similar to the wealth they are getting from oil at the moment. Also, for many of those early centuries Islam was rather different, especially before the closure of the gates of Ijtihad. Obviously 'the church' is not going to start oppression other modes of thought while it is still formulating it's own religion. Compared to modern Islam, it must have been like the sixties in those early days. A new releigion was being put together. People were free to criticise it or suggest changes.

Contrary to your claims Christianity just kept Europe in the dark ages, for almost the entire period that they implemented and subscribed to it.

Can you elaborate on this? How did Christianity keep Europe in the dark ages?

They did not horde it and consider it a secret weapon with which to control and hinder other civilisations.

I think you've made this claim before, but never explained it. How can you horde knowledge while still conducting a broad scientific research effort?

The reason there's been no significant Islamic scientific advances since is because there's no Islamic civilisation left to make them.

You don't need a great civilisation to continue scientific research. A city is usually enough to give a scientist a place to work from. The Europeans managed to get it together despite the fact that they all spoke different languages and were regularly invading each other, being crippled by disease, etc.

and when we consider that most Muslim countries are either being occupied, engaged in wars or too poor to even feed their own people

There are plenty that are filthy rich.

Secondly, are you aware that there's 3 Muslim countries that have higher literacy rates than Australia?

Are these the ones that are occupied, the ones at war, or the ones that are too poor to feed their own people?

There are 57 member-countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around 500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims. The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an 'Academic Ranking of World Universities, and intriguingly, not one university from the Muslim-majority states was in the top-500.

That is interesting Soren, and that may have a lot to do with it. There are plenty of filthy rich Muslim countries around that could easily set up top notch research facilities for anyone interested in science. They even have universities, but there is something different about them. Maybe it's the American's fault for giving them so much money for oil.

Do you truly believe that their are NO muslims scientists that have ACHIEVED ANYTHING in the last 100 years?

Les, check Soren's post. 3 of them won nobel prizes.

Why do Mayans or Aztecs also not reference the great current achievements of their civilisations?

Jared Diamond put together a good answer to this question in 'Guns, Germs and Steel.'

freediver,

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I don't think modern day Muslim states actively suppress science and the work of scientists, they just don't fund or encourage it. Do you mean in the Ottoman period?

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No Muslim country really has a decent military to speak of. Probably the best would be Pakistan, and they have a few scientists of note, perhaps even a Nobel prize awarded to someone originally from the country (but for work in another country), probably because Pakistan is a little short on particle accelerators at the moment. Their top nuclear scientist is in custody at the request of the Americans.

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You left out the prosperity part. Pretty hard to make scientific discoveries if you can't even manage to feed a good proportion of your people. Also Europe did have a decent level of peace and prosperity in the sense all their conflicts were internal. There was no real external force that was capable of impeding or dominating them from about the 16th. century onwards. The Muslim states today are all in the position of client-states. They have no forseeable hope of breaking out of their inferior position until they manage to break loose of the client-state relationship.

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Putting taxes on trade doesn't build an industrious and advanced society. To suggest this is the reason they advanced is just ridiculous. The Persians before them had just as much control over the silk road and other major trade routes, yet didn't come close to the heights achieved by Islamic society.

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Exactly, they have a huge amount of revenue, and do absolutely nothing noteworthy with it. They squander it on their lavish royal lifestyles.

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Agreed, but I don't think you actually understand the difference. You seem to be under the impression that it was a difference that permitted them to implement something other than Islam or that was somehow related to liberal-secularist ideas?

Do you actually realise what ijtihad is?

The fact is, that the growing Islamic revivalist movement today, is the return to ijtihad. Whereas you seem to consider it part of the stifling reason for decline. ie. adherence to the fundamental principles of Islam.

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Criticism of Islam was never permitted in those times. Your fantasy of Islam as some experimental counter-culture is just that, a fantasy. The Muslims in the early days, the most prosperous days, were the strictest in their adherence to Islam. Orthodoxy was very solidly adhered to and adopted by the state.

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Most notably the Catholic church banning books, banning scientific ideas, banning study of the Arabic language & numerals, Banning study of ancient Greek works etc.

They didn't even let the common folk read the Bible in their own languages.

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There's  several means. The first is obviously through classification and restriction of technologies. For example restriction on export of cryptography, which prevented most of us not that long ago even being able to download a version of Netscape Navigator with a decent encryption level.

Secondly is through providing 'incentives' for foreign scientists to migrate to the US, otherwise known as 'intellectual poaching' or 'brain drain'.

Some links about this:
Brain Drain: Egypt's diaspora doesn't yet equal that of the Irish, but it's moving in the same direction
Reversing the brain drain: Will Egypt finally join the international Knowledge Economy?
Poaching Scientists
The Egyptian Brain Drain: A Multi-Dimensional Problem

Now this is not to suggest that it's all a one way street, it's not, and that's my point also, the Arab governments provide absolutely no incentive for these intellectuals to stay in their countries. They're not interested in them staying and in bettering the situation of the country. If the situation of the country improves, they'll most likely be overthrown, or at best their people will demand a lot more rights, which they don't wanna give.