Science In Islamic Countries

biohack sends us to Physics Today for a thought-provoking article on the status of and prospects for science in Islamic countries. The author, a Pakistani physicist, posits that 'Internal causes led to the decline of Islam's scientific greatness long before the era of mercantile imperialism. To contribute once again, Muslims must be introspective and ask what went wrong.' The author makes a few strong conclusions, many of which are relevant to the general debate between science and religion. From the article: "Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world. If the scientific method is trashed, no amount of resources or loud declarations of intent to develop science can compensate. In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or 'butterfly-collecting' activity. It cannot be a creative process of genuine inquiry in which bold hypotheses are made and checked."

Comments

interesting

[rucs_hack]

Wow, for the first time ever, an article linked off a slashdot story that I find completely fascinating. As a scientist myself I find it utterly tragic that the past greatness of Islamic scholars is apparently largely forgotten outside of the work of science historians.

One can only hope that this current poverty of science in the islamic world is reversed.

Re:interesting

[CodeBuster]

One can only hope that this current poverty of science in the islamic world is reversed.

It will not happen as long as the clerics, mullahs, and religious scholars are in charge. The average level of non-religious education in these countries is now so poor that many muslims call anyone who can read and write Arabic, with knowledge of the Koran and the Hadith, a great scholar even though the poor chap probably never completed the equivalent of Western grade school in other areas of non-religious study such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course, but part of the problem in the Islamic world is that the people equate religious knowledge with all the truth that is worth knowing and are suspicious or even hostile to secular ideas in general and scientific ideas, especially those which bring into question dogmatic "truths" from religion, in particular. This becomes dangerous when an "educated man" (i.e. the mullah) tells the people that they should kill all of non-believers, for example, because the people base the "truth" of the mullah's statements or interpretation of the religious texts based upon his perceived authority and scholarship, the appeal to authority (i.e. if the mullah, an educated man, says that it is so then it must be true...end of discussion), instead of the logic of what the mullah is actually saying.

There is a lesson here for the fundamentalists here in the United States. Hopefully we will be wise enough to learn it, but unfortunately it seems that we, as a society, are taking the same long road to stagnation in science that others have in the past.

Re:The Arab World...

[rucs_hack]

Islam had it fair share of brilliant scholars, the problem was it had its fair share of fundamentalist religious types, and they won.

Did you know that there is a good deal of evidence that the western renaissance was started using Islamic knowledge taken from libraries in spain?

simplified yes, but basically true.

Ahmadinejad on Science and Islam

[SuperKendall]

Here's the Iranian leaders take on science is in the Islamic world:

Speaking as "an academic," Ahmadinejad said that from his perspective, the role of science is to serve Islam and that any science that does not serve Islamic goals is corrupt. As he put it, "Science is the light, and scientists must be pure and pious. If humanity achieves the highest level of physical and spiritual knowledge but its scholars and scientists are not pure, then this knowledge cannot serve the interests of humanity." Elaborating on this notion, he argued that Western scientists serve corrupt governments who reject the pure and pious path of Islam and therefore are used as agents for corruption.

From a Caroline Glick article on Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Ender_Wiggin]

That's not true, its a myth fomented by Christian missionaries.

Allah is the Arabic word for God. "Al-Lah" means The God. The Arabs at the time believed that Allah created the universe, then had daughters and other gods to intercede for Him. If you read islamic history, you'll see that the polytheists already believed in God, but also in others as well.

As for the "moon" hoax, that never existed. The Quran specifically says not to worship the sun or the moon, but to the One God that made all of creation. The crescent is a pre-islamic symbol, and made popular by the Ottoman empire. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) never used the crescent, instead using flags that said the Kalimah ("No god but God") writen on them.

Allah is how you say God in Arabic. Even the Arab Christians and Jews of the time never disputed that Allah was the real God. The Arabic translation of the Bible uses "Allah" as it is how you say God. The Pope and other religious leaders of Christianity and Judaism and Islam even agree on this.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Kadin2048]

If it wasn't any of these things, the horrible truths you have already noticed about it would have led to its destruction long ago. That's not much of a compelling argument. By that notion, if the government of the United States launched its missiles tomorrow and glassed all the predominantly Muslim countries in the world, and then followed up with land forces to finish the genocide, until any trace of Islam had been wiped off the Earth, then secularism would be provably a better philosophy than Islam, as evidenced by the fact that Islam would not longer exist.

That seems rather hollow. Using social success as a measure for the superiority of a meme only works if you can control for external factors; if that meme is the only thing differentiating two groups. Since that's almost never the case, you need to consider other factors.

A belief system might be helpful at one point in social evolution, but unhelpful, even harmful, at a later state; or one society might just be luckier in terms of access to natural resources, allowing itself to build faster and conquer its neighbors, even though it carries the weight of a harmful belief system like a terminal disease, waiting to erupt later.

Using outcomes from inequal start conditions as a measure of objective superiority only works on infinitely long timescales. In the real world, it's a poor metric.

From an atheist who actually lives in the ME

[PtrToNull]

I'm an astronomer from Kuwait. Let me tell you that while many of the reasons mentioned as valid, they're overly simplified.You'll be surprised that many long held notions are utterly false.

• Lack of Democracy: While this is indeed true, democracy will bring havoc to the middle east. We have a decent partial-democracy in Kuwait with a freely elected parliament and it's already a nightmare. If democracy ever to become wide spread in Kuwait, I'll immediately migrate! Remember that democracy can be like two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. In Kuwait case at least, the fanatics won the greatest number of seats, and all their legislations are geared toward making Kuwait an Islamic state. Our "dictatorship" thankfully blocked a number of bills, forcibly, like the bill to implement full Shria'a Law (think flogging and chopping hands). It would have been much worse than Saudi Arabia. The fanatics were successful in passing bills to limit freedom of speech, even to go as far as to imprison those who dare to criticize not prophet Muhammad, but his friends. They were able to pass laws to segregate the university, and now instead of one university they're building TWO next to each other DOUBLE the cost and with a small river running between them to complete separate. If you think creationists and neo-cons are fanatics, you haven't experienced the mental terrorism here, we take it to another level.
• Suppression of women: Again, it's an over simplification. In Kuwait, 70% of university graduates are women, about half the working force are women. Most technical jobs & especially IT in the government are headed by women (our IT department has about 5 males and 17 females engineers). My boss is a woman in fact, and so is her director! Also, women, by convention, come to work half an hour late, and leave work half an hour earlier, and this applies everywhere where.
  
  The 'elected' parliament refused to grant women their right to vote up until 2005 where, again, the 'dictatorship' government forced the law on the parliament and threated to dissolve it if it didn't pass. My sister completely covers up her face, if somebody saw me with her, they'd think "Oh look at that Arab suppression his wife/family", while in fact, I tried many time to convince her to take it off and how ridiculous it is but with no success, she's a devout Muslim and she doesn't want to do that and she thinks hideously of any thing western. While it is true that a lot wear it forcibly, it's mostly due to culture "oh everyone is wearing it so I'll do that". On many instances, I've seen women become more conservative by their own will. What's ironic is that in the last parliamentary elections where women got the right to run for office and vote, an Islamic MP (Daif-Allah bu Ramiah) who worked so hard to devoid women of their rights by launching numerous campaigns, actually won the race mostly due to the overwhelming votes he got from women voters (Women voters represent more than 50% of the total vote, despite that fact, no women MP was elected). It's completely insane and I truly don't understand it.
• Economy: This is a joke too, at least in my case where the whole country pretty much runs on a welfare-like system. Education, health, utilities, housing..etc if not subsidized heavily (and I do mean heavily) then they're basically free. And with the huge multi billion surpluses we've been lucky to get in the last few years, what's preventing us from advancing in science???

The country lives in a horrendous bureaucracy, most people are so lazy to work in an ethical manner, and most scientific institutions are run by zealot Islamic creationists who are wasting research money on 'scientific miracles of the Quran' and producing more books on why 'Evolution is a lie'. Their influence is heavy in education where kids are actually taught evolution, and how to 'disapprove it', not to mention the hatred driven religious classes which, thanks aga

Re:"Here's your problem"

[aichpvee]

Secularism is a better philosophy than Islam in the same way that rationality is superior to delusion. I'm not sure what you think that has to do with The United States though.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[LinuxIsRetarded]

A person who believes in one religion easily sees the follies of other religions while remaining amazingly ignorant of how sad their own faith seems to unbelievers.

My faith (Christianity) teaches me to love everyone, regardless of their economic status, race, or faith. Because I am completely ignorant as to how someone could regard such teachings as "sad," please educate me.

To me, it feels like you had a part of your brain damaged and turned off when you were a child by your parents before you could protect yourself.

I can't speak for the person to whom you are replying, but I actually didn't believe in God for the first 25 years of my life.