Evading painful truths

Mindlessly clicking on links sometimes takes you to interesting places. And "interesting" comes in many guises, from the kind of stuff the tickles your fancy with a the feathers of a peacock to the kind of interesting that results from being crushed by a grand piano that happened to fall out of the 50th floor window. The Muslim Directory Online is interesting in the sense that it evokes wistful and exasperated sighs. Take for instance The Rise and Fall Of Muslim Scientists. Most of the article is devoted to Arab science and history, rather than Muslim though; but for a large part of history, the two were broadly synonymous, with the exception of the Persians.

The basic message in the article is that the Mohammed and the Quran exhort pious Muslims to learn and acquire knowledge. Being a good Muslim means seeking new knowledge:

1. Seek knowledge "even though it be in China".
2. "The acquisition of knowledge is compulsory for every Muslim, whether male or female."
3. "The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr."
4. "Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave."
5. "God has revealed to me, Whoever walks in the pursuit of knowledge I facilitate for him the way to heaven".

This goes on for a while like that. There's little to object to in this, except for the fact that it does intertwine science and religion to an alarming degree. But this is also something the Christianity grappled with over the centuries, from heliocentrism to genetic engineering (although actually doing science is now completely separate from religion in most cases; it's left to the individual scientist). Charting the rise of Arab scientists, the article continues:

The Islamic Empire for more than 1,000 years remained the most advanced and civilised nation in the world.

A somewhat arguable point here. It's definitely true that from a Eurocentric point of view, the Ottoman empire with its Arab and Muslim culture was far advanced scientifically for many centuries. Stretching it to 1,000 years is taking it a bit too far.

This is because Al-Islam stressed the importance and respect of learning, forbade destruction,

Would somebody please tell this to the Islamofascists who attacked us in the hope of destroying us? Perhaps undertaking not to try to destroy western culture (and throw in Israel for good measure) might be a good start here. They definitely need to take this non-destruction thing more seriously.

developed in Muslims the respect for authority,

And this is a good thing?

discipline, and tolerance for other religions.

Well, it was tolerance in the sense that the conquered peoples were allowed to practice their religion. However, in order to obtain full rights in the Ottoman empire you had to convert to Islam, not be a slave and also not be a woman. I guess it's tolerance of a sort.

The article goes on to explain the various achievements of Muslims over the centuries. Again, there is no argument that for a long, long time Arab culture was more advanced than the Christian Europe of the Dark Ages. Some of the claims the article makes strech the truth a bit, while others strech the elastic band truth to the point where it snaps, recoils and takes out an eye: "[...] Muslims are directly responsible for the European Renaissance." *ahem*

The article is titled "The Rise And Fall Of Muslim Scientists." It spends much time talking about the Golden Age of Arab science (such as the glowing description of 10th century Córdoba), but the problem becomes obvious on the page actually listing Arab scientists. The most recent one listed is Ibn Khaldun, in the year 1332. The "rise" is clear, but the article completely fails to address the "fall"-aspect. Instead, we are taken in the next paragraph to a description of the current sad state of Muslim learning:

The status of the Muslim Ummah is of great concern to all the Muslim intellectuals. No one can deny that the Muslim Ummah occupies a position which is at the lowest rung of the ladder in the world. The share of the Muslims in Nobel Prizes and the Olympic Games is close to nothing.

Olympic Games? Where did that come from? I thought we were talking about science here. Still, the Arabs' most prominent contribution to the Olympics was in 1972 in Munich, led by all-star athlete Yasser Arafat.

Muslims contributions to literature both general and scientific is marginal at the best. It is very sad to see the status of Muslims in the present world at the bottom. Muslims have been economically exploited and politically subjugated.

And this is as close as the article gets to exploring the fall of Muslim science. It shows the great achievements of centuries past, it describes the sad state of Muslim learning now, but it just can't bring itself to ask the all-important question: What went wrong? The author only affirms the Victim status of Arabs today without any attempt at introspection or exploration. That would require the seeking of knowledge and confronting of painful truths. But until the Arabs manage to look past their self-inflicted backwardness and self-deception, there's not much hope for a revival in Arab science, or in Arab culture more generally. There are brighter spots in the Muslim world, such as Malaysia, where the economy is doing a lot better than anywhere in the Arab world, and where at least the beginnings of a middle class are emerging. But that far east the suffocating aspects of Arab culture never weighed as heavily as in regions closer to the holy places of the Arabian peninsula.

Now it's a matter of connecting the dots, from the heyday of Arab learning to its current backward position in the world. At some point the cognitive dissonance may overcome the deeply rooted victim complex and the pathological obsession with Israel and lead to the triumph of reason over dogma in the Arab world. I'm not holding my breath though.