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Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science (2011)

83 points by gradus_ad 3y ago

catlover76 3y ago
This article seems to reiterate a lot of theories that I don't think enjoy much currency any more; the criticism of al-Ghazali in particular is I think often considered an orientalist trope that turns out to be a meh argument, mostly because the stuff he was arguing against was not necessarily anything that promoted science. Similarly, the article suggests Mu'tazalites were more influential than they were. But they were not a major factor in why the Islamicate* world was ahead scientifically, so their demise as a school of thought or sect in Islam wouldn't have been a factor in Arab/Muslim science's decline. * Seems to me a good term to use--as the article illustrates, there has been a degree of discussion about which term applies. We are referring to a region that was under Muslim rule and whose societies were naturally influenced by Islam, but whose populations were not all Muslim--in many places, not even majority Muslim for a while, and whose leading thinkers were not all Muslim in terms of faith (Jewish intellectualism flourished at this time and place as well), nor all Arab in terms of race/ethnicity (many Muslim scientists and philosophers of the Islamic Golden Age were Irani).
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
"Al-Mamun picked up the pro-science torch lit by the second caliph, al-Mansur, and ran with it. He responded to a crisis of legitimacy by attempting to undermine traditionalist religious scholars while actively sponsoring a doctrine called Mu’tazilism that was deeply influenced by Greek rationalism, particularly Aristotelianism. To this end, he imposed an inquisition, under which those who refused to profess their allegiance to Mu’tazilism were punished by flogging, imprisonment, or beheading. But the caliphs who followed al-Mamun upheld the doctrine with less fervor, and within a few decades, adherence to it became a punishable offense. The backlash against Mu’tazilism was tremendously successful: by 885, a half century after al-Mamun’s death, it even became a crime to copy books of philosophy. The beginning of the de-Hellenization of Arabic high culture was underway. By the twelfth or thirteenth century, the influence of Mu’tazilism was nearly completely marginalized. In its place arose the anti-rationalist Ash’ari school whose increasing dominance is linked to the decline of Arabic science. With the rise of the Ash’arites, the ethos in the Islamic world was increasingly opposed to original scholarship and any scientific inquiry that did not directly aid in religious regulation of private and public life. While the Mu’tazilites had contended that the Koran was created and so God’s purpose for man must be interpreted through reason, the Ash’arites believed the Koran to be coeval with God — and therefore unchallengeable. At the heart of Ash’ari metaphysics is the idea of occasionalism, a doctrine that denies natural causality. Put simply, it suggests natural necessity cannot exist because God’s will is completely free. Ash’arites believed that God is the only cause, so that the world is a series of discrete physical events each willed by God." More controversially: "Christianity acknowledges a private-public distinction and (theoretically, at least) allows adherents the liberty to decide much about their social and political lives. Islam, on the other hand, denies any private-public distinction and includes laws regulating the most minute details of private life. Put another way, Islam does not acknowledge any difference between religious and political ends: it is a religion that specifies political rules for the community. Such differences between the two faiths can be traced to the differences between their prophets. While Christ was an outsider of the state who ruled no one, and while Christianity did not become a state religion until centuries after Christ’s birth, Mohammed was not only a prophet but also a chief magistrate, a political leader who conquered and governed a religious community he founded. Because Islam was born outside of the Roman Empire, it was never subordinate to politics. As Bernard Lewis puts it, Mohammed was his own Constantine. ... What is needed in Islam is less self-pride and more self-criticism. Today, self-criticism in Islam is valued only insofar as it is made as an appeal to be more pious and less spiritually corrupt. And yet most criticism in the Muslim world is directed outward, at the West. This prejudice — what Fouad Ajami has called (referring to the Arab world) “a political tradition of belligerent self-pity” — is undoubtedly one of Islam’s biggest obstacles. It makes information that contradicts orthodox belief irrelevant, and it closes off debate about the nature and history of Islam."
- knodi123 3y ago
  > While Christ was an outsider of the state who ruled no one, and while Christianity did not become a state religion until centuries after Christ’s birth Jesus was a jew, and while he wasn't a big fan of death penalties, he certainly believed that all 613 of the minutia-governing rules of judaism were important to obey. And a case could be made that the early (first generation) church was already pretty controlling and harsh. Take for instance the story of Ananais and Sapphira. It describes an incident in a church community led by Peter (the apostle), where the people practiced total communal ownership, and penalties for breaking the rules (or lying about breaking the rules, depending on your reading) were punished with summary execution. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%205%3A1-11&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%205%3A1-11...
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > And a case could be made that the early (first generation) church was already pretty controlling and harsh. Take for instance the story of Ananais and Sapphira. It describes an incident in a church community led by Peter (the apostle), where the people practiced total communal ownership, and penalties for breaking the rules (or lying about breaking the rules, depending on your reading) were punished with summary execution. Read literally, no execution is described in the story in question (Acts 5:1-11), just two people who both spontaneously drop dead. Peter is said to have explicitly (and immediately before it occurred) predict the second, but no one is described as taking any act to cause either of the deaths, the first of which is implicitly from guilt, the second could be argued as either from that or knowledge of the first.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - knodi123 3y ago
      > Read literally, no execution is described in the story in question If you think that their deaths were a coincidence, then I hope you never sit jury duty in a murder trial. Nobody says they died of guilt, either. The modus operandi is simply not mentioned- all we have is means, motive, opportunity, and a pretty strong implication.
satellite2 3y ago
This article doesn't mention brain drain.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  TFA is about a process that was mostly over by the 14th century. Contemporary events are not a part of the story it is trying to tell.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > article doesn't mention brain drain It does, indirectly, both ways: in Islam's golden age, scholars flocked to its capitals.
cute_boi 3y ago
[flagged]
fallingfrog 3y ago
I mean, that’s what religious ultra conservative fundamentalism does. It posits a static, eternal, knowable world, where everyone has a specific place and there is no need for change. And new ideas are mostly seen as a threat to that stability. Why would that society produce science? Our own ultra conservatives are too few to get such a permanent headlock on society.
- wrs 3y ago
  …yet.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  > Our own ultra conservatives are too few to get such a permanent headlock on society. Lifetime judicial appointments in the US have me wondering what we are in, if not a headlock.
alephnerd 3y ago
I don't buy this argument. In the 1960s you could have made the same argument about cultural collapse in China, India, or South Korea, yet look at them today. And clearly, it's not Islam related based on Turkey's (automotive and aerospace) and Malaysia's (semiconductors and microelectronics) relatively decent R&D capacity despite being upper middle income countries neighboring R&D laggard non-Muslim countries (Greece and Thailand respectively), or even Iran and their fairly robust STEM R&D base (looking at you Shiraz University of Technology). My hunch is probably moreso institutional, or lack thereof. The Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos from the mid-19th century to present due to colonialism (both Western European and Ottoman), the World Wars, and the subsequent decolonization movement, and institutions weren't able to be sustained. Those that did thrive (Cairo University, Baghdad University, Damascus University, American University of Beirut) in the early to mid 20th century were purged - either by the Baathists or due to the Lebanese Civil War.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > could have made the same argument about China, India, or South Korea in the 1960s China, sure. They rapidly course corrected. India and Korea didn't have prominent anti-intellectual movements. > Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos from the mid-19th century to present due to colonialism It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age. > it's not Islam related based on Turkey and Malaysia's relatively decent R&D capacity The article seems to go out of its way to restrict its arguments to the Arabic world, not Islam in general. (Its arguments are also strongest in the pre-modern world, proximate to Islam's Golden Age.)
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > prominent anti-intellectual movements Parts of India did. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India's two poorest states today used to have relatively decent British built universities (Lucknow University, Allahabad University, Patna University) that stood toe-to-tow with top universities like Delhi University, Calcutta University, Osmania University, Panjab University etc. But in the 1960s-70s, Ram Manohar Lohia [0] lead an anti-intellectual, pro-Hindi and anti-English [1],and anti-rich movement in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that lead to the rise of Lalu Prasad Yadav (Bihar) and Mulayam Singh Yadav (UP), both of whom were directly influenced and in some cases mentored by Lohia. It was under those two CMs that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar began falling behind the rest of India in the 1980s-2000s period. With Korea, I guess we can point to Juche but then again I said South Korea, and not North, though university purges were very common during the democracy movement of the 70s and 80s leading to events like the Gwangju Uprising. > It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age I mean you can characterize any region like that. For example, arguing that China was basically in a century long civil war from 1850-1950, along with the multiple other chaotic periods in between dynasties. For example, China didn't even catch up to Iraq's developmental indicators until the 2000s > The article seems to go out of its way to restrict its arguments to the Arabic world, not Islam in general. Fair enough. [0] - https://theprint.in/opinion/great-speeches/when-ram-manohar-lohia-blasted-pseudo-intellectuals-for-175-page-five-year-plan-document/1986321/ https://theprint.in/opinion/great-speeches/when-ram-manohar-... [1] - https://www.epw.in/journal/2009/48/discussion/lohia-and-language.html https://www.epw.in/journal/2009/48/discussion/lohia-and-lang...
DrNosferatu 3y ago
[flagged]
- DrNosferatu 3y ago
  #irony
- readyplayernull 3y ago
  Why are you being downvoted? Could you expand on this? Japan fought Catholic influence and traded with Portugal. Seems like there could be a good theory behind this point.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Why are you being downvoted? Could you expand on this? Why were the Portuguese, a technologically inferior civilisation at the time of the Islamic Golden Age, able to take anything from them? Going from the 9th century to 19th would be analogous to someone time travelling forward a millenium to find a world in which Haiti is the world's superpower. Like, cool. But what happened? How did that inversion take place?
  - DrNosferatu 3y ago
    I’m dead serious: a lot of navigation instruments and maths that enabled the Portuguese discoveries were learned from the Arabs next door. Why I’m being downvoted, I would risk it’s because HN can’t handle the tiniest bit of tongue in cheek…
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > a lot of navigation instruments and maths that enabled the Portuguese discoveries were learned from the Arabs next door And a lot of Islamic mathematics and science were based on the work of the Greeks. Adapting knowledge isn't stealing it. Paritcularly when we're discussing two colonial powers, where "stealing" is a directly applicable term. > because HN can’t handle the tiniest bit of tongue in cheek HN upvotes jokes when they're good. Insubstantive and not funny, on the other hand, no.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
(2011) Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24728809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24728809
naiv 3y ago
[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > birth rates of migrants with low iqs Do you have a source for this? If you're arguing for a genetic determination of IQ, it's odd to be making that in the comment thread of an article about why the Islamic Golden Age ended.
  - naiv 3y ago
    Of course there are a lot of sources but after 3 minutes the comment got already flagged. It's pointless to put energy into this discussion if people don't want to face the truth.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Of course there are a lot of sources but after 3 minutes the comment got already flagged Lots of sources you can't produce. Got it.
      - naiv 3y ago
        [flagged]
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        None of that says anything about IQ.
        naiv 3y ago
        [flagged]
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
BenFranklin100 3y ago
“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" The Christian world has long acknowledged a division between the secular and the religious. Islam never has. This has hurt both scientific and industrial progress, and the productive synergy between the two.
- 29athrowaway 3y ago
  Could it be because the Roman Empire directly shaped all the official precepts in the belief system through the ecumenical councils ran by the Roman emperor?
- mathgradthrow 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure that this line is supposed to be tongue in cheek. Everything is god's, some of it is Caesar's.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    God is not concerned with trivialities of coinage. Indeed it is explicitly stated that `No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.` (mammon meaning "riches"), which draws a clear distinction between those things that are of Godly import versus those that are merely earthly. The point is that those items made in Caesar's image should be considered his property and reunited with him, whereas those items made in God's image (humanity) are God's property and should be reunited with Him.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Islam was birthed with one of the largest conquests of history. [1] Christianity was birthed with persecution by the Jews and Romans. Christianity had its whack at that too in later centuries, but the original source materials are different in treatment of believer/unbeliever. Buddhism is similar (persecution by Hindus). I'd argue this affected cultural appetite for tolerance, expression, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests
Asooka 3y ago
[flagged]
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
This is a great read. The anti rationalist movement was a huge turning point. I worry some of it is happening in the US right now. And once you go down that path, there is no turning back. There is no polemicist like Christopher Hitchens in the US right now in popular culture and that worries me too.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > anti rationalist movement was a huge turning point. I worry some of it is happening in the US right now. And once you go down that path, there is no turning back There is a lot of turning back. China turned back from the Cultural Revolution, for example. Hell, Europe was anti-intellectual until the Calvinist/Lutheran pushback.
- aprilthird2021 3y ago
  Postmodernism was an anti-rationalist movement which ascended highly in the US and did affect the sciences even (it itself was influenced by the seemingly impossible new quantum scientific breakthroughs going on). Rationalism and anti-rationalism don't change the laws of science, the learning / teaching of it, or it's value in output. They are just fads which ebb and flow as humans and their environments do
  - ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
    Hope you are right but I remember for example in the 2000s global warming wasn't a right or left wing ideology. It was what scientists were saying and everyone believed them. Now scientists are trusted far less.
    - aprilthird2021 3y ago
      I don't think people are more likely to believe that scientists are lying about global warming or conspiracies like this. Those are vocal super minorities. But I think people are less willing to give up their shot at making it in an increasingly unequal world for the sake of global warming. In some ways it's kind of anti-rational for scientists to direly warn of global warming while fixing it requires people to sacrifice more in a world where it's so hard to get ahead. Though we call these social waves anti-rational and rational they are really just preferences and fads that come and go. Smoking was "cool" for many years despite tons of science showing how bad it was for so many decades. Drinking alcohol still is. This doesn't mean people who drink are anti-rational, yeah?
mavili 3y ago
Very simple: the Arab world has been battling with Western colonialism cancer for the past couple of centuries, they haven't got any time left to spend on scientific matters or improve. Ready, set, go! Start downvoting
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  TFA is about a process that was, according to TFA, mostly done by the 14th century.
  - mavili 3y ago
    huh?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      The story told in the article ends around 1400 given or take a century. What the Arab world has faced in the "last couple of centuries" has no relevance to the story the article is trying to tell.
- gifvenut 3y ago
  So you didn’t read the article then.
  - mavili 3y ago
    I read parts of it and saw that there are false claims in it, not worth wasting time after that. Even the title is wrong, Arabic world didn't "turn away" from science, they were forced to deal with other issues.
mkoubaa 3y ago
This comment thread is amusing in both its argumentativeness and extreme misunderstanding.
speedylight 3y ago
[flagged]
- aprilthird2021 3y ago
  Wtf are you talking about? Read the article. Islam isn't backwards and there is something in the world beyond reason and logic. Many devout Muslims in the US are themselves doctors. If you read the article you'd see that political decline of a united empire is one of the largest factors leading to loss of scientific output. Scientific output is expensive, requires stability, etc. There are people of all stripes and beliefs who think "healing" is something non-scientific. It has nothing to do with religion. Look at the resurgence of crystals, herbal healing, other forms of crockery in the US itself!
  - speedylight 3y ago
    -
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      That's all fine. But the article isn't about the current state of any part of the Arabic world. It's a guess at the historical process by which science became less significant in the Arab world, something that happened centuries before you were born. You may well have grown up with the implications of that, but that's not what TFA was about.
      - speedylight 3y ago
        Ok I see what you mean and maybe I should’ve paid a bit more attention to the specifics, but I still stand by my original comment.
        krapp 3y ago
        Stop deleting your comments. It vandalizes the thread.
someotherperson 3y ago
The author seems to use Islam, Arab and Arabic (the language?) as synonymous, and lumps in Muslim (but non-Arab) scientists under the Arabic umbrella. That makes as much sense as lumping in Chinese-Americans under "English scientists." Looking into the author of the article it makes it seem like this entire article is an intentionally malicious submarine[0] rather than something out of incompetence. But I digress. Arabs, as in the ethnic group, have never been scientifically driven. It has always been the Ajam (Greeks, Jews, Persians, Afghans, Turkics, Lebanese, Armenians, Assyrians, and so on) in Arab-majority lands that have contributed academically. Modern countries with multicultural backgrounds (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) had their scientists leave the countries for places like the US and UK in the first half of the 20th century due to better facilities, and the second half (as scientific contribution became more inclusive) has been in a state of chaos that also led to significant brain drain. The only actually stable countries are exclusively Arab theocracies (Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) that have no historical or cultural inclination, let alone drive, towards the sciences. The non-Arab lands that the author's description of the "Arabic (sic) world" seems to lump in includes Iran -- which is effectively under siege and prevented from contributing -- and Turkey, which does do a great deal of contribution. [0] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- aprilthird2021 3y ago
  Yep, if you want to find the scientists of the Muslim world go to an American university.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    Or Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan before Zia ul Haq, or Turkey.
  - someotherperson 3y ago
    Definitely. An example is Abdul Jabbar Abdullah[0]. Iraqi, not ethnically Arab, contributed to research at MIT. And filed under 'white[1] American' science. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Jabbar_Abdullah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Jabbar_Abdullah [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States#Arab_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...
trane_project 3y ago
The mongols sacked Baghdad, killed everyone, and destroyed all institutions of higher learning and the people working in them. Then the age of exploration permanently shifted the center of world power away from the Middle East and the Silk Road. Then European colonial powers subjugated those territories. Afterward, Saudi Arabia started exporting its very "particular" (to put it lightly) branch of Islam. Sprinkle some US intervention and you get to the present day. Not much of a turning away, but a systematic and violent dismantling of institutions of learning (and a supporting culture) that took centuries to build. No surprise that those conditions didn't happen again in the same place. In most places, such a golden age never happens.
- bamboozled 3y ago
  Just remember that when the Muslims invaded India they did the same. All the great Buddhist universities were destroyed.
moomin 3y ago
The New Atlantis is a journal founded by the social conservative advocacy group the Ethics and Public Policy Center. It is not peer-reviewed on scientific topics. Both of the previous statements are taken verbatim from Wikipedia. It’s very well-written, but it’s pushing a very specific set of talking points that seem suspiciously close to some standard conservative talking points. Make of this what you will.
wara23arish 3y ago
The arab world is perfectly capable of practicing science. However in countries where your future is bleak, you either immigrate or work barely able to get by. One only needs to read recent history of any random country picked at random. And you will see a multitude of incidents of “oh yeah that will fuck them over”. Here’s one where im from, a famine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_Mount_Lebanon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_Mount_Lebano... induced by both Ottomans and the allies. Where 50% of mount lebanon the population died of starvation (christians and druze). The list is literally endless. What drives me crazy is that the average american thinks arabs/muslims hate the west because of “their way of life”. My jaw dropped the first time I heard someone say that. One small thing that can help is if the west can stop propping up dictators and genocidal countries. That would really help
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  This is all true (or certainly could be). But what does it have to do with a process that, in TFA, occured before the 14th century?
  - wara23arish 3y ago
    I know but I saw some comments on here painting arabs with a brush as if we don’t believe in medicine/doctors etc. Im ashamed to say but im annoyed and tired of it (especially lately)
spxneo 3y ago
wonder why this was flagged seemed like a pretty good reasoning, all civilizations peak and bottom, Arab world once peaked just like Western civilization has peaked today
TMWNN 3y ago
Highly relevant: TIL that 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years. That is fewer than the number translated in Spain in one year. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3e2xho/til_that_10000_books_have_been_translated_into/ https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3e2xho/til_th...>

83 points by gradus_ad 3y ago

This article seems to reiterate a lot of theories that I don't think enjoy much currency any more; the criticism of al-Ghazali in particular is I think often considered an orientalist trope that turns out to be a meh argument, mostly because the stuff he was arguing against was not necessarily anything that promoted science. Similarly, the article suggests Mu'tazalites were more influential than they were. But they were not a major factor in why the Islamicate* world was ahead scientifically, so their demise as a school of thought or sect in Islam wouldn't have been a factor in Arab/Muslim science's decline. * Seems to me a good term to use--as the article illustrates, there has been a degree of discussion about which term applies. We are referring to a region that was under Muslim rule and whose societies were naturally influenced by Islam, but whose populations were not all Muslim--in many places, not even majority Muslim for a while, and whose leading thinkers were not all Muslim in terms of faith (Jewish intellectualism flourished at this time and place as well), nor all Arab in terms of race/ethnicity (many Muslim scientists and philosophers of the Islamic Golden Age were Irani).

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

"Al-Mamun picked up the pro-science torch lit by the second caliph, al-Mansur, and ran with it. He responded to a crisis of legitimacy by attempting to undermine traditionalist religious scholars while actively sponsoring a doctrine called Mu’tazilism that was deeply influenced by Greek rationalism, particularly Aristotelianism. To this end, he imposed an inquisition, under which those who refused to profess their allegiance to Mu’tazilism were punished by flogging, imprisonment, or beheading. But the caliphs who followed al-Mamun upheld the doctrine with less fervor, and within a few decades, adherence to it became a punishable offense. The backlash against Mu’tazilism was tremendously successful: by 885, a half century after al-Mamun’s death, it even became a crime to copy books of philosophy. The beginning of the de-Hellenization of Arabic high culture was underway. By the twelfth or thirteenth century, the influence of Mu’tazilism was nearly completely marginalized. In its place arose the anti-rationalist Ash’ari school whose increasing dominance is linked to the decline of Arabic science. With the rise of the Ash’arites, the ethos in the Islamic world was increasingly opposed to original scholarship and any scientific inquiry that did not directly aid in religious regulation of private and public life. While the Mu’tazilites had contended that the Koran was created and so God’s purpose for man must be interpreted through reason, the Ash’arites believed the Koran to be coeval with God — and therefore unchallengeable. At the heart of Ash’ari metaphysics is the idea of occasionalism, a doctrine that denies natural causality. Put simply, it suggests natural necessity cannot exist because God’s will is completely free. Ash’arites believed that God is the only cause, so that the world is a series of discrete physical events each willed by God." More controversially: "Christianity acknowledges a private-public distinction and (theoretically, at least) allows adherents the liberty to decide much about their social and political lives. Islam, on the other hand, denies any private-public distinction and includes laws regulating the most minute details of private life. Put another way, Islam does not acknowledge any difference between religious and political ends: it is a religion that specifies political rules for the community. Such differences between the two faiths can be traced to the differences between their prophets. While Christ was an outsider of the state who ruled no one, and while Christianity did not become a state religion until centuries after Christ’s birth, Mohammed was not only a prophet but also a chief magistrate, a political leader who conquered and governed a religious community he founded. Because Islam was born outside of the Roman Empire, it was never subordinate to politics. As Bernard Lewis puts it, Mohammed was his own Constantine. ... What is needed in Islam is less self-pride and more self-criticism. Today, self-criticism in Islam is valued only insofar as it is made as an appeal to be more pious and less spiritually corrupt. And yet most criticism in the Muslim world is directed outward, at the West. This prejudice — what Fouad Ajami has called (referring to the Arab world) “a political tradition of belligerent self-pity” — is undoubtedly one of Islam’s biggest obstacles. It makes information that contradicts orthodox belief irrelevant, and it closes off debate about the nature and history of Islam."

knodi123 3y ago
> While Christ was an outsider of the state who ruled no one, and while Christianity did not become a state religion until centuries after Christ’s birth Jesus was a jew, and while he wasn't a big fan of death penalties, he certainly believed that all 613 of the minutia-governing rules of judaism were important to obey. And a case could be made that the early (first generation) church was already pretty controlling and harsh. Take for instance the story of Ananais and Sapphira. It describes an incident in a church community led by Peter (the apostle), where the people practiced total communal ownership, and penalties for breaking the rules (or lying about breaking the rules, depending on your reading) were punished with summary execution. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%205%3A1-11&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%205%3A1-11...
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > And a case could be made that the early (first generation) church was already pretty controlling and harsh. Take for instance the story of Ananais and Sapphira. It describes an incident in a church community led by Peter (the apostle), where the people practiced total communal ownership, and penalties for breaking the rules (or lying about breaking the rules, depending on your reading) were punished with summary execution. Read literally, no execution is described in the story in question (Acts 5:1-11), just two people who both spontaneously drop dead. Peter is said to have explicitly (and immediately before it occurred) predict the second, but no one is described as taking any act to cause either of the deaths, the first of which is implicitly from guilt, the second could be argued as either from that or knowledge of the first.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - knodi123 3y ago
    > Read literally, no execution is described in the story in question If you think that their deaths were a coincidence, then I hope you never sit jury duty in a murder trial. Nobody says they died of guilt, either. The modus operandi is simply not mentioned- all we have is means, motive, opportunity, and a pretty strong implication.

satellite2 3y ago

This article doesn't mention brain drain.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
TFA is about a process that was mostly over by the 14th century. Contemporary events are not a part of the story it is trying to tell.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> article doesn't mention brain drain It does, indirectly, both ways: in Islam's golden age, scholars flocked to its capitals.

cute_boi 3y ago

[flagged]

fallingfrog 3y ago

I mean, that’s what religious ultra conservative fundamentalism does. It posits a static, eternal, knowable world, where everyone has a specific place and there is no need for change. And new ideas are mostly seen as a threat to that stability. Why would that society produce science? Our own ultra conservatives are too few to get such a permanent headlock on society.

wrs 3y ago
…yet.
paulryanrogers 3y ago
> Our own ultra conservatives are too few to get such a permanent headlock on society. Lifetime judicial appointments in the US have me wondering what we are in, if not a headlock.

alephnerd 3y ago

I don't buy this argument. In the 1960s you could have made the same argument about cultural collapse in China, India, or South Korea, yet look at them today. And clearly, it's not Islam related based on Turkey's (automotive and aerospace) and Malaysia's (semiconductors and microelectronics) relatively decent R&D capacity despite being upper middle income countries neighboring R&D laggard non-Muslim countries (Greece and Thailand respectively), or even Iran and their fairly robust STEM R&D base (looking at you Shiraz University of Technology). My hunch is probably moreso institutional, or lack thereof. The Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos from the mid-19th century to present due to colonialism (both Western European and Ottoman), the World Wars, and the subsequent decolonization movement, and institutions weren't able to be sustained. Those that did thrive (Cairo University, Baghdad University, Damascus University, American University of Beirut) in the early to mid 20th century were purged - either by the Baathists or due to the Lebanese Civil War.

deleted 3y ago
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JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> could have made the same argument about China, India, or South Korea in the 1960s China, sure. They rapidly course corrected. India and Korea didn't have prominent anti-intellectual movements. > Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos from the mid-19th century to present due to colonialism It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age. > it's not Islam related based on Turkey and Malaysia's relatively decent R&D capacity The article seems to go out of its way to restrict its arguments to the Arabic world, not Islam in general. (Its arguments are also strongest in the pre-modern world, proximate to Islam's Golden Age.)
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > prominent anti-intellectual movements Parts of India did. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India's two poorest states today used to have relatively decent British built universities (Lucknow University, Allahabad University, Patna University) that stood toe-to-tow with top universities like Delhi University, Calcutta University, Osmania University, Panjab University etc. But in the 1960s-70s, Ram Manohar Lohia [0] lead an anti-intellectual, pro-Hindi and anti-English [1],and anti-rich movement in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that lead to the rise of Lalu Prasad Yadav (Bihar) and Mulayam Singh Yadav (UP), both of whom were directly influenced and in some cases mentored by Lohia. It was under those two CMs that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar began falling behind the rest of India in the 1980s-2000s period. With Korea, I guess we can point to Juche but then again I said South Korea, and not North, though university purges were very common during the democracy movement of the 70s and 80s leading to events like the Gwangju Uprising. > It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age I mean you can characterize any region like that. For example, arguing that China was basically in a century long civil war from 1850-1950, along with the multiple other chaotic periods in between dynasties. For example, China didn't even catch up to Iraq's developmental indicators until the 2000s > The article seems to go out of its way to restrict its arguments to the Arabic world, not Islam in general. Fair enough. [0] - https://theprint.in/opinion/great-speeches/when-ram-manohar-lohia-blasted-pseudo-intellectuals-for-175-page-five-year-plan-document/1986321/ https://theprint.in/opinion/great-speeches/when-ram-manohar-... [1] - https://www.epw.in/journal/2009/48/discussion/lohia-and-language.html https://www.epw.in/journal/2009/48/discussion/lohia-and-lang...

DrNosferatu 3y ago

[flagged]

DrNosferatu 3y ago
#irony
readyplayernull 3y ago
Why are you being downvoted? Could you expand on this? Japan fought Catholic influence and traded with Portugal. Seems like there could be a good theory behind this point.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Why are you being downvoted? Could you expand on this? Why were the Portuguese, a technologically inferior civilisation at the time of the Islamic Golden Age, able to take anything from them? Going from the 9th century to 19th would be analogous to someone time travelling forward a millenium to find a world in which Haiti is the world's superpower. Like, cool. But what happened? How did that inversion take place?
- DrNosferatu 3y ago
  I’m dead serious: a lot of navigation instruments and maths that enabled the Portuguese discoveries were learned from the Arabs next door. Why I’m being downvoted, I would risk it’s because HN can’t handle the tiniest bit of tongue in cheek…
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > a lot of navigation instruments and maths that enabled the Portuguese discoveries were learned from the Arabs next door And a lot of Islamic mathematics and science were based on the work of the Greeks. Adapting knowledge isn't stealing it. Paritcularly when we're discussing two colonial powers, where "stealing" is a directly applicable term. > because HN can’t handle the tiniest bit of tongue in cheek HN upvotes jokes when they're good. Insubstantive and not funny, on the other hand, no.

deleted 3y ago

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ChrisArchitect 3y ago

(2011) Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24728809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24728809

naiv 3y ago

[flagged]

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> birth rates of migrants with low iqs Do you have a source for this? If you're arguing for a genetic determination of IQ, it's odd to be making that in the comment thread of an article about why the Islamic Golden Age ended.
- naiv 3y ago
  Of course there are a lot of sources but after 3 minutes the comment got already flagged. It's pointless to put energy into this discussion if people don't want to face the truth.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Of course there are a lot of sources but after 3 minutes the comment got already flagged Lots of sources you can't produce. Got it.
    - naiv 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        None of that says anything about IQ.
        naiv 3y ago
        [flagged]
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago

BenFranklin100 3y ago

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" The Christian world has long acknowledged a division between the secular and the religious. Islam never has. This has hurt both scientific and industrial progress, and the productive synergy between the two.

29athrowaway 3y ago
Could it be because the Roman Empire directly shaped all the official precepts in the belief system through the ecumenical councils ran by the Roman emperor?
mathgradthrow 3y ago
I'm pretty sure that this line is supposed to be tongue in cheek. Everything is god's, some of it is Caesar's.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- explaininjs 3y ago
  God is not concerned with trivialities of coinage. Indeed it is explicitly stated that `No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.` (mammon meaning "riches"), which draws a clear distinction between those things that are of Godly import versus those that are merely earthly. The point is that those items made in Caesar's image should be considered his property and reunited with him, whereas those items made in God's image (humanity) are God's property and should be reunited with Him.
paulddraper 3y ago
Islam was birthed with one of the largest conquests of history. [1] Christianity was birthed with persecution by the Jews and Romans. Christianity had its whack at that too in later centuries, but the original source materials are different in treatment of believer/unbeliever. Buddhism is similar (persecution by Hindus). I'd argue this affected cultural appetite for tolerance, expression, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests

Asooka 3y ago

[flagged]

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

This is a great read. The anti rationalist movement was a huge turning point. I worry some of it is happening in the US right now. And once you go down that path, there is no turning back. There is no polemicist like Christopher Hitchens in the US right now in popular culture and that worries me too.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> anti rationalist movement was a huge turning point. I worry some of it is happening in the US right now. And once you go down that path, there is no turning back There is a lot of turning back. China turned back from the Cultural Revolution, for example. Hell, Europe was anti-intellectual until the Calvinist/Lutheran pushback.
aprilthird2021 3y ago
Postmodernism was an anti-rationalist movement which ascended highly in the US and did affect the sciences even (it itself was influenced by the seemingly impossible new quantum scientific breakthroughs going on). Rationalism and anti-rationalism don't change the laws of science, the learning / teaching of it, or it's value in output. They are just fads which ebb and flow as humans and their environments do
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  Hope you are right but I remember for example in the 2000s global warming wasn't a right or left wing ideology. It was what scientists were saying and everyone believed them. Now scientists are trusted far less.
  - aprilthird2021 3y ago
    I don't think people are more likely to believe that scientists are lying about global warming or conspiracies like this. Those are vocal super minorities. But I think people are less willing to give up their shot at making it in an increasingly unequal world for the sake of global warming. In some ways it's kind of anti-rational for scientists to direly warn of global warming while fixing it requires people to sacrifice more in a world where it's so hard to get ahead. Though we call these social waves anti-rational and rational they are really just preferences and fads that come and go. Smoking was "cool" for many years despite tons of science showing how bad it was for so many decades. Drinking alcohol still is. This doesn't mean people who drink are anti-rational, yeah?

mavili 3y ago

Very simple: the Arab world has been battling with Western colonialism cancer for the past couple of centuries, they haven't got any time left to spend on scientific matters or improve. Ready, set, go! Start downvoting

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
TFA is about a process that was, according to TFA, mostly done by the 14th century.
- mavili 3y ago
  huh?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    The story told in the article ends around 1400 given or take a century. What the Arab world has faced in the "last couple of centuries" has no relevance to the story the article is trying to tell.
gifvenut 3y ago
So you didn’t read the article then.
- mavili 3y ago
  I read parts of it and saw that there are false claims in it, not worth wasting time after that. Even the title is wrong, Arabic world didn't "turn away" from science, they were forced to deal with other issues.

mkoubaa 3y ago

This comment thread is amusing in both its argumentativeness and extreme misunderstanding.

speedylight 3y ago

[flagged]

aprilthird2021 3y ago
Wtf are you talking about? Read the article. Islam isn't backwards and there is something in the world beyond reason and logic. Many devout Muslims in the US are themselves doctors. If you read the article you'd see that political decline of a united empire is one of the largest factors leading to loss of scientific output. Scientific output is expensive, requires stability, etc. There are people of all stripes and beliefs who think "healing" is something non-scientific. It has nothing to do with religion. Look at the resurgence of crystals, herbal healing, other forms of crockery in the US itself!
- speedylight 3y ago
  -
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    That's all fine. But the article isn't about the current state of any part of the Arabic world. It's a guess at the historical process by which science became less significant in the Arab world, something that happened centuries before you were born. You may well have grown up with the implications of that, but that's not what TFA was about.
    - speedylight 3y ago
      Ok I see what you mean and maybe I should’ve paid a bit more attention to the specifics, but I still stand by my original comment.
      - krapp 3y ago
        Stop deleting your comments. It vandalizes the thread.

someotherperson 3y ago

The author seems to use Islam, Arab and Arabic (the language?) as synonymous, and lumps in Muslim (but non-Arab) scientists under the Arabic umbrella. That makes as much sense as lumping in Chinese-Americans under "English scientists." Looking into the author of the article it makes it seem like this entire article is an intentionally malicious submarine[0] rather than something out of incompetence. But I digress. Arabs, as in the ethnic group, have never been scientifically driven. It has always been the Ajam (Greeks, Jews, Persians, Afghans, Turkics, Lebanese, Armenians, Assyrians, and so on) in Arab-majority lands that have contributed academically. Modern countries with multicultural backgrounds (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) had their scientists leave the countries for places like the US and UK in the first half of the 20th century due to better facilities, and the second half (as scientific contribution became more inclusive) has been in a state of chaos that also led to significant brain drain. The only actually stable countries are exclusively Arab theocracies (Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) that have no historical or cultural inclination, let alone drive, towards the sciences. The non-Arab lands that the author's description of the "Arabic (sic) world" seems to lump in includes Iran -- which is effectively under siege and prevented from contributing -- and Turkey, which does do a great deal of contribution. [0] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

aprilthird2021 3y ago
Yep, if you want to find the scientists of the Muslim world go to an American university.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  Or Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan before Zia ul Haq, or Turkey.
- someotherperson 3y ago
  Definitely. An example is Abdul Jabbar Abdullah[0]. Iraqi, not ethnically Arab, contributed to research at MIT. And filed under 'white[1] American' science. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Jabbar_Abdullah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Jabbar_Abdullah [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States#Arab_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...

trane_project 3y ago

The mongols sacked Baghdad, killed everyone, and destroyed all institutions of higher learning and the people working in them. Then the age of exploration permanently shifted the center of world power away from the Middle East and the Silk Road. Then European colonial powers subjugated those territories. Afterward, Saudi Arabia started exporting its very "particular" (to put it lightly) branch of Islam. Sprinkle some US intervention and you get to the present day. Not much of a turning away, but a systematic and violent dismantling of institutions of learning (and a supporting culture) that took centuries to build. No surprise that those conditions didn't happen again in the same place. In most places, such a golden age never happens.

bamboozled 3y ago
Just remember that when the Muslims invaded India they did the same. All the great Buddhist universities were destroyed.

moomin 3y ago

The New Atlantis is a journal founded by the social conservative advocacy group the Ethics and Public Policy Center. It is not peer-reviewed on scientific topics. Both of the previous statements are taken verbatim from Wikipedia. It’s very well-written, but it’s pushing a very specific set of talking points that seem suspiciously close to some standard conservative talking points. Make of this what you will.

wara23arish 3y ago

The arab world is perfectly capable of practicing science. However in countries where your future is bleak, you either immigrate or work barely able to get by. One only needs to read recent history of any random country picked at random. And you will see a multitude of incidents of “oh yeah that will fuck them over”. Here’s one where im from, a famine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_Mount_Lebanon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_Mount_Lebano... induced by both Ottomans and the allies. Where 50% of mount lebanon the population died of starvation (christians and druze). The list is literally endless. What drives me crazy is that the average american thinks arabs/muslims hate the west because of “their way of life”. My jaw dropped the first time I heard someone say that. One small thing that can help is if the west can stop propping up dictators and genocidal countries. That would really help

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
This is all true (or certainly could be). But what does it have to do with a process that, in TFA, occured before the 14th century?
- wara23arish 3y ago
  I know but I saw some comments on here painting arabs with a brush as if we don’t believe in medicine/doctors etc. Im ashamed to say but im annoyed and tired of it (especially lately)

spxneo 3y ago

wonder why this was flagged seemed like a pretty good reasoning, all civilizations peak and bottom, Arab world once peaked just like Western civilization has peaked today

TMWNN 3y ago

Highly relevant: TIL that 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years. That is fewer than the number translated in Spain in one year. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3e2xho/til_that_10000_books_have_been_translated_into/ https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3e2xho/til_th...>