The history of technology is built upon borrowing, stealing, and sharing ideas. Right now we are debating in English, a technology we got through sharing with parents, friends etc, using letters and numbers of Arabic origins.
The best we can say about technology is: some societies have developed, others have harnessed it, and others are profiting from it. However to say technology is the sole preserve of one single society is a conservative at best. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants, some whom we know, others whom we do not know.
The thing about knowledge is that it starts at that very instant that one acknowledges how little they know.
Yes, and Iâve given the Islamic golden age and empire itâs fair due of credits while the Europeans where busy with feudal wars. Civilizations, empires, groups, religions and cultures have all come and gone. There was a time where the East and China was far superior than the west. There was the time where the Islamic empire was far ahead in science and trade and ideas flowed. But that time is long gone. Yet Many Muslims still act like they are the teachers when they refused to learn from the West.
There was a specific phenomenon in the 13th century when the Islamic world gave up science. Most of the developments you mentioned from the Golden Age of Islam such as Algebra, astronomy and science were driven by a common held belief that through understanding reason and natural laws, one could get closer to God.
Then around 1250 a group of fundamentalist clerics said that this was heresy. To say that there were laws of the natural world would mean that God was bound by laws beyond his control. God is omnipotent, so this was impossible. Something falls to the ground not because of gravity, but because God willed it to be. If tomorrow God didnât will it to fall, it wouldnât.
This anti-reason, literalist school became the paradigm in mainstream Sunni Islam and there have hardly been any innovations since.
Hmm, I wonderâŚwhen the Islamic empire was at its zenithâŚdid it scale those heights because of or despite Islam? Two hypotheses: A - Islamic religion built or allowed the empire to flourish B - Islamic religion hinders development of a prosperous empire.
Lets take hypothesis A: If that is correct, can it be responsible for todayâs problems in Muslim societies? As has been said ad-infinitum: the Islamic religion is immutable âas it was in the beginning, and still shall beâŚâ If it is startic, how can something contribute towards a golden age, and then contribute towards abject misery, without it changing its nature? Seems like a contradictory position to hold.
If we take B as true, that Islamic religion cannot contribute anything positive towards societal development, how do we then talk of a golden age of Islam?
My point with the aboulve is pretty simple: have you considered the possibility that the endemic problems you mention, might be caused by other factors?
Now, that is something specificâŚdigestable. We do see a schism developing in an ideology that keeps being branded as monolithic. You admit that the religion has its various shades.
Shouldnt the discussion then be narrowed down to a subset of the religion, instead of the whole?
Because there is such a thing as mainstream Islam, despite there being no central controlling body. There was a caliphate in the Middle East until the end of the Ottoman empire.
Literalism is the paradigm in most Sunni societies. There are outliers but thatâs a separate conversation and the Gulf Arabs hate them more than mine believers. An even more fundamentalist form of literalist Islam(Salafism/Wahhabism) is being pushed by Gulf Arabs to Muslims around the world through the use of their piles of cash
Because if we go down that specific thread, you will also find that a host of other Muslims took exception to that.
Any religion will have adherrents who prefer the blood and gore bits. Heck even in sercular life there are people who obsess with blood and glory.
Unfortunately the problem wih extremists is that they can end updominating the discourse, drowning other moderate voices. They only need a wide-spread sense of griveance that they can exploit, and then they come out of the woodwork. That could (perhaps) explain the middle east dynamics?
The Golden Age of Islam refers to the period of innovation. One of the reasons for this innovation was medieval schools that believed studying reason brought believers closer to God. Considering that this line of thought is now considered by most Muslim clerics to be heresy, itâs academical .
Islam may have been a driver of good at one stage, but without an enlightenment period, itâs hard to see how it can ever be again.
If we consider the idea of âbiblical literalismâ, this has to do with interpretation of religious texts, is it not? Interpretation is what the group or individual decides is the correct meaning.
If it is a question of interpretation, can we then say the text is faulty, or the interpretation is at fault? Because these texts exists within political and societal realitiesâŚwhich are not just local, they can be global.
Iâm absolutely sure there are other factors. But the common denominator is Islam isnât it?
Iâm sure there was a time when Islamic theology worked for empire building. Naturally expending empires would usually absorb cultures, expend trade, increased and combine knowledge. All at the cost of the people in their way of course. It wasnât like the Islamic golden age was great for everyone. It sucked for the people who was being conquered and didnât want to convert.
But itâs no longer an empire, not since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Yet they still behave like it is. I donât see Islam separating religion and state unless you can provide evidence otherwise. And this doesnât fit modern civilization imo.
People. There are people in all those countries. People are selfish. They will fight and kill, and use whatsever at hand to rationalise. There was one interesting dimension to the witches of Salem story, where most of the women accused of witchcraft were usually well to do widows.
Lack of development. Which is the cause and which is the effect? It has been found that societies in extreme upheaval can be radicalised faily quickly.
Oil. Many of those countries have some association with oil: they have it, or they are on the route to oil. The record is there of meddling in those societies to secure energy access.
Globalisation. All those societies are plugged in to the world wide world. Which means upheaval can be contagious. It might manifest with local characteristics, but those characteristics are only symptoms of the problem, not the cause.
National borders. We can also speculate that the national border project has started showing its problems, starting in those countries where they were externally imposed, but with locally imposed ones also creaking under the fiction.
I could go on and on. The point I am try to make is this: try and be more accommodating to the impact of other factors, cause I think tge matter is more compkicated than just one factor.
Even the UN and Islamic NGOs cite a lack of interest in science and education (due to religious teachings) as a key reason for the lack of development in Islamic nations.
I agree with your point. My point is: are nations the same as the religion? We cannot conflate a nation, built out of whatever ideology expediency dictates, to the ideology that they use.
Iâm saying a lot of factors influence how things turn out. None so as much as probably religion as your acting belief system of your culture imo. Youâre listing things other countries have to deal with as well. Yet Muslim countries are unevenly struggling at pretty much every index of measuring how well things are going compared to none Muslim.
There is no country where everything is going well, hence hounding of minorities and immigrants. The weakest in an society are usyally the first to be demonised, in order to deflect problems. Migrants, muslims, gays, neighnours become the scapegoat. I just hope we are not doing that in this thread.
Here is something that I think could settle this discussion:
What do you base your opinion on, that religion has an overwhelming impact? Perhaps this could also enlighten me to the errors of my ways and reasonings.
Culture is to put it simply the ideas, behaviors and accumulating of arts of a group of people. What else is that but religion? Your acting belief system.
Think of it this way, you may be a die hard atheist. But if you were educated in the West. Your whole belief system of everything is shaped by the judeo Christian faith that also borrowed from other religions before it to absorb it. The arts you studied from the west. What kind was the most influential? The western writers. Which kind were the most influential? The laws and ideas of human rights, which religion was the most influential in the West shaping all of these. Your holidays and traditions? You can reject them sure. But theyâve been indoctrinated if youâve been educated in the West.
Ah, but, this is not a legal discussion, this is a religious and political discuss. We both know that legal form and practical substance are not necessarily the same.
