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.
> 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.)
>It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age
It would even fairer to say that that region had advanced civilization, huge riches, stable organization, culture (music, poetry, literature), science (math, chemistry, engineering), and so on, at times when America was still inhabited by the Native Americans, and Western Europe was a bunch of barbarian tribes living in shitholes, and well after it started turning into medieval shithole fiefdoms (and then started using the loot of the Americas and the advantage of gunpowder to dominate).
> even fairer to say that that region had advanced civilization, huge riches, stable organization, culture (music, poetry, literature), science (math, chemistry, engineering), and so on
Yes. This is the entire point of the article. It was an advanced civilisation. Then it fell to the point that it could be colonised by its former inferiors. How that happens is objetively interesting.
>Yes. This is the entire point of the article. It was an advanced civilisation
Nowhere as back as "the bronze age" though. More like "well into the 14-15th century".
>Then it fell to the point that it could be colonised by its former inferiors.
Not very difficult since they eventually had the looting of the Americas and gunpowder to their advantage. Even with that, they came close to being conquered themselves when the Ottomans went westwards (not to mention the Caliphate of Cordoba).
The Hittites. (The Sea Peoples?) The Parthians. The Romans. You're talking about a fertile patch near the birth of civilisation, of course it's going to have had an old and violent history.
> since they eventually had the looting of the Americas and gunpowder to their advantage
Gunpowder was invented in China. The Arab world had vastly superior maritime capabilities in its heyday. (To the extent that it single handedly enabled Europe's blue-ocean capabilities.) Its empires were also colonising powers, so it's not like in an alternate timeline they wouldn't have expanded across the Atlantic.
And in case it needs to be stated, the Arabs were successful colonisers and conquerors [1].
>The Hittites. (The Sea Peoples?) The Parthians. The Romans. You're talking about a fertile patch near the birth of civilisation, of course it's going to have had an old and violent history.
I contested the "Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos" similar to the colonial era situation "since the Bronze Age" claim. The arab world (speaking of the areas) did quite well for close to a millenium before the colonial era. And Europe itself had a huge bloody history of course both until Westphalia (and, unfortunately) well after it - so if the arab world having wars and disputes before the colonial era can be said to be "managed chaos", then the same can be said of it.
>Gunpowder was invented in China.
It was still put to use for guns in a large scale in the west first. This just says that the Chinese and the Arabs missed the opportunity to adopt it first - it doesn't disprove that gunpowder was a key advantage for the european rise and dominance.
>Its empires were also colonising powers, so it's not like in an alternate timeline they wouldn't have expanded across the Atlantic.
In an alternative timeline they could even go to the moon first. In this timeline, they didn't benefit from the looting of a whole new continent with easy to defeat locals dying of gunpowder and sickness.
> This just says that the Chinese and the Arabs missed the opportunity to adopt it first
On a slightly unrelated tangent, I recommend reading "The Rise and Fall of E.A.S.T" by Yasheng Huang [0].
He's a Professor at MIT Sloan who has advised the Chinese, Israeli, and Indian governments on Human Capital Development, and provides a pretty interesting take on the development of management and institutional capacity within China, and how it's impacted R&D capacity.
When Muslims rule over anywhere, they don't exploit, loot, and abuse their resources for their own selfish advantage. That's the biggest difference that has led the West to remain powerful and prosperous while the Arab and Muslim world have been in this situation for so long.
> It would even fairer to say that that region had advanced civilization, huge riches, stable organization, culture (music, poetry, literature), science (math, chemistry, engineering), and so on
Religion hampered all this progress still. Those things would have happened far quicker without religion dragging humanity down.
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.
Lucknow university was not toe-to-toe with anything. But you are right, Allahabad university had people like Meghnad Saha and C. V. Raman working there at some point.
Also, Mulayam Singh did not come into power until the 1990s. The deterioration of universities all over India (not just UP and Bihar) started soon after Independence, with the nascent government looking for leapfrogs through the establishment of IITs, RECs and medical colleges, diverting money away from full-fledged universities. This policy has had some success, but the universities were left in shambles. India has still not done course-correction on that.
> Lucknow university was not toe-to-toe with anything
Back when my Nanu was helping with all this post-independence "mandirs of science" stuff in the 60s-70s period Lucknow University was fairly competitive in Electronics, Mechanical Engineering, and Aerospace because of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd - their secondary R&D and production center was Lucknow as it was close enough to Delhi for government oversight yet far enough that it wouldn't be impacted by a India-Pakistan War.
> universities were left in shambles
Yet Osmania, Panjab, Visevarya, Anna, etc continued to perform (and in some cases still do) in STEM.
They never truly declined in the 1960s-2000s period, while Bihar and UP's GDPs both crashed under Lalu and Mulayam, and largely because of de-industrialization in Eastern UP and Bihar due to their warped version of Lohiaism (which Lohia would have hated)
Parts of everywhere have fundamentalist nutters. What happened in the Arab world is distinct from what happened in Korea, India or China, and I don't think we can dismiss what happened to it as being analogous to their experience.
> you can characterize any region like that. For example, arguing that China was basically in a century long civil war from 1850-1950
Come on, the Levant has probably seen the highest frequency of violent redrawings of boundaries and governments per square mile in human history. (Baghdad would have probably won had we not ruined its soil.)
I think Western and Ottoman colonisation are valid explanations for why the Arab world looks the way it does today. I don't think it's an adequate explanation for why it fell from being the centre of the world in its heyday.
And I think it matters in the sense it's a good example of how we can't really generalize a "culture" or "civilization" because such grand visions are basically marketing for all intents and purposes.
Like during the Islamic Golden Age, was there truly a difference between Byzantine Damascus or Arab Damascus? Can't you argue that al-Khwarizmi is actually a descendent of Persian High Culture, as he was from Khiva in Central Asia before it was Turkified. If it's based on Arabic as a language, then you can argue that most of Indian civilization in the 1st millennium was actually Persian due to Farsi-Dari being the lingua Franca of the educated (eg. My great-grandfather and grandfather both learned Farsi-Dari at the village school).
> Come on, the Levant has probably seen the highest frequency of violent redrawings of boundaries and governments per square mile in human history
I can say the same about Punjab, with the multiple Afghan, Turkic, Maratha, British, and indigenous invasions.
Or Southern China which was only pacified in the 1700s before collapsing into clan wars, a messianic revolution, and then the collapse of the Qing empire so around 150-200 years of war.
All history was bloody and brutal, and the Levant was fairly stable under Ottoman rule, which was around 500 years in those regions. Compared to the multiple Warring States periods in China and India, that's pretty stable.
Also, why are you getting downvoted?!? Nothing you said deserves a downvote.
> you can argue that most of Indian civilization in the 1st millennium was actually Persian
I'd say that's valid, particularly if you're tracing specific intellectual or cultural traditions. (Agree in not keeping culture/civilisational scorecards.)
> can say the same about Punjab, with the multiple Afghan, Turkic, Maratha, British, and indigenous invasions
Fair enough. It's another patch of fertile land, at a crossroads between birth sites of human civilisation. That does advance the point, however, that managed chaos is not necessarily inimical to intellectual traditions being preserved.
> why are you getting downvoted?!? Nothing you said deserves a downvote.
I sort of assume in these discussions everyone gets downvoted and we try to find folks who will change our mind :).
Turkey, a relatively new country that is the successor of the Ottoman empire, was founded with secularism in mind. You can learn more about that by reading about the Ataturk reforms.
And the rest of the reply is just as equally uninformed.
Ik about Laiklik and Kemalism, yet it was under Erdogan that Turkiye became a leader in UAV research.
And it's not like Islamists weren't attending METU or ITU - look at Erbakan (the founder of the precursor of the AKP and Erdogan's and other Turkish Islamic politicians mentor) and the fact that he was a western trained MechE professor and researcher. Or Turgut Ozal (a Power Engineer and Professor by training) in the 1980s and his hardcore Naqshabandi leanings, as a number of Kurds in Turkiye like him are. Heck, ITU was an Ottoman institution.
And that doesn't explain modern Malaysia which was basically a product of the Hertog riots, and Tunku Abdul Rahman and Mahatir Mohammad's Islamist leanings.
Heck, Erdogan is literally a Turkish knockoff of Mahatir Mohammad - who was the original Erdogan back in the 1980s-2000s
Yeah, if anything Turkey's a damning argument against Islam-influenced governance. Ataturk dragged Turkey into the 20th century with his secular "reforms". I put quotes there because the word seems like an understatement.
For a US audience, imagine if George Washington had declared that we were abandoning Latin script for Cyrillic (Ataturk brought in Latin script to replace Arabic), abolished common law for civil law (islamic law to civil law), banned people from wearing crucifixes in public (banning the fez, headscarves, veils), made the weekend a Sunday-Tuesday affair (thursday-saturday became the European friday-sunday), gave women the right to vote, gave us all an additional name (introduction of surnames), and put us on the Chinese calendar (Gregorian).
Medieval Europe changed its posture towards science through movements such as Scholasticism.
Where does Scholasticism come from? If you trace its origins you will get to Islamic Spain and other Islamic territories.
Saint Thomas Aquinas studied under Saint Albert the Great, who was someone who studied translations of books from Islamic libraries produced in Toledo, Spain, as well as works from Jewish scholars such as Maimonides (who also lived in Islamic Spain).
Even after these reforms, scientists like Galileo Galilei were prosecuted so the tolerance of science was only up to the point in which it caused discomfort to the Church.
My point is you can't make a cultural argument about human development, as culture and identity are inherently intersectional and wishy-washy, and cultures change very rapidly.
Institutional arguments are easier to test and validate, as there are actual benchmarks you can use.
There is too much distance between culture in the 1500s and the 21st century to accurately garner an impact between one or the other. The world has been globalized since the 19th century, and as such all societies have mixed and matched ideas and philosophies.
Heck, my great-grandfather - who never lived in a house with electricity until our ancestral village in the high Himalayas was electrified in the 1980s - knew about Hitler and FDR, and vaguely heard about "communism", Wilson's 14 Points (being a village teacher didn't hurt either), and switched from drinking Gurgur Cha made using Gunpowder Tea to Masala Chai using Assam tea after the British lead marketing campaign during the Great Depression.
“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.
You are oversimplifying the Enlightenment. One needs only to look at Galileo, and the current unnecessary shenanigans of American Christians over evolution to know that Christianity does have a problem with science.
Likewise, islam was never meant as a religion. It was always a state, for the vast majority of it's adherents, and power and law came first and second, with religion a very distant concern. The center point of islam was always the state, power and army, not religion (just as it is in current islamic countries, the state holds TIGHT control over religion, not the other way around).
People call it a religion now ... because there isn't a state anymore (called a caliphate). Which illustrates yet again how central the state is to islam. All states, including the Taliban and the Mullahs of Iran, radically de-emphasize the fact that the islamic religion demands a global central totalitarian state, and emphasizes nationalism and, for example, the difference between Iranians and Pakistani. Every 6 year old Iranian knows how "their islam", first, centers around the Iranian state, and second how pakistani islam is totally wrong. Plus, of course, how trying to work out those differences, as the "one islam" ideal in the religion itself would seem to reward, is treason.
Galiloe's story is a bit more complicated than that.
The Inquisition didn't have any problems with Galileo and his theories until he started insulting the pope in one of his books. Then the theories became a pretext to pressure him.
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.
> “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"
That was a statement made when the Caesar was a nonbeliever, he ruled the world, and he could literally crucify you for believing the wrong stuff. It just means "Folks, let's not pick up an unnecessary fight against someone who can casually murder all of us."
Of course, later the Ceasars became Christian, and the line became a lot more blurry.
"The Christian world has long acknowledged a division between the secular and the religious."
ALL religions _insist_ on a divide between secular and religious by definition.
I still consider myself a Christian but please do better than a quote from the big guy that related to taxation to somehow justify some sort of scientific related superiority over another Abrahamic religion.
I think you also managed to miss-quote the usual translation because I think it should be something like: "Render unto Caesar that which is due to Caesar and render unto God those things that are due to God". My Aramaic is a little rusty and I don't have access to the original docs so I might be wrong.
I think that the issue at the moment that JC was quoted talking about was regarding taxation and JC used that to make a rather neat earthly/heavenly analogy. Earthly taxation unto Caesar and Heavenly "taxation" unto God.
I think that twiddling an analogy about a situation that happened roughly 2000 years ago into another analogy, might be a step too far.
Not Aramaic, but Greek. Aramaic was the language spoken by the people in the Gospels, but the Gospels themselves were written in koine Greek, the English of the ancient world. The sentence says "Give to Cesar what is Cesar's and to God what is God's" in my translation. From Matthew, 22:16-22.
Like you point out the context was taxation. Pay Cesar's taxes and give prayer to God, would be a more liberal translation.
To summarise, the Pharisees wanted to trap jesus, by making him say something foolish. So they sent their students accompanied by Herod's followers (Ἡρῳδιανῶν) to, well, troll Jesus, first praising him for speaking the truth without fear, and then asking him if he was asking to be given Cesar's tribute (κῆνσον Καίσαρι). Jesus asked them to show him the coin of the tribute and when they showed him a dinar (δηνάριον) he asked them: "Whose is this image and legend?". They replied it was Cesar's. And Jesus said " Then give to Cesar what is Cesar's and to God what is God's". And thus doth he shutte them uppe for goode and there was much rejoicement. Liberal translation.
The previous passage (Matthew 22:1-14) is the parable of the wedding, where Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven with a human kingdom, whose king throws a wedding party for his son. This could be mistaken as Jesus claiming for himself an earthly kingdom, with him as king. This would have displeased Cesar.
So the Pharisees were trying to entrap Jesus and make him look like he wanted to rebel against Rome, why they took Herod's followers with them. But this backfired and they gave Jesus the chance to allay any suspicions that he was anything else but a religious leader, and to say that he was not a threat to Rome. He did that by invoking a powerful symbol of Cesar's power: his coin, with his face and name on it. Jesus was a smart guy!
Also: hey, I can still read that. Blimey! Been a while...
"Also: hey, I can still read that. Blimey! Been a while... "
Good skills Sir! I can only hark back to Divinity O level studies at school. I never studied old Greek but I did Latin. Dad was stationed in Cyprus so I am vaguely familiar with the alphabet - enough to know a dinar is a "denarion".
Thanks for the interesting response. I doubt my original parent gives a toss though 8)
Neither has the Jewish world which still produces lots of scientific output.
I think Occam's razor applies here. Stable, long-lasting governments and ample resources make a nice bed for technological and scientific output anywhere.
I think Christianity had the fight with science during Copernicus and Galileo. Islam never had that fight. And since Islam claimed to be the last and final word of god, it became really hard to change it.
Galileo's story is a bit exaggerated in the popular zeitgeist. Promoting heliocentrism vs geocentrism as a scientific theory may have annoyed the church, but he was ultimately granted permission to publish his findings. It was the satirical, strawman representation of the geocentrist (and, by extension, the Pope) as a complete idiot in his published dialogue that got him imprisoned.
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?
I don't think Jesus was huge on the division between church and state. That line in particular was interpreted by his audience to mean they should render no tax to Caesar in Luke.
Where do you read that in Luke? To me, the message is very clear:
This item is Caesar's. It has his name on it, his face on it, he made it, it's his. You should return it to him.
You, on the other hand, are God's. You are made in His image, and you should return yourself to Him.
And I do not see any evidence of the listeners rejecting the message. Instead we get a jumpcut to a seductress.
Then the whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king."
> The company in question purposely misinterpreted Jesus’s words
That's why I said "was interpreted by his audience". We know what he (allegedly) said and how his audience (allegedly) understood it. What (if anything) he was implying and whether the audience misunderstood him has been the subject of debate for pretty much the entire history of Christianity.
Has it been? I think it's pretty universally believed that he was sentenced despite having committed no crimes and died sinless. He was tried for promoting not paying taxes and was judged to have not done so. There's really no room for other interpretations I can see, but if you can provide some Christian source which interprets that statement (You should return this coin to Caesar, it's his) as saying you shouldn't pay taxes, I'd love to hear it.
One of the most central themes in Christianity is that these folks were lying through their teeth in oder to falsely convict Jesus, and they knew it. That's what makes it the story of the individual who did no wrong being falsely put to death, willingly carrying out His sentence, and in the process absolving mankind of the wrongs they did or ever will do. It wouldn't be all anywhere near that powerful of a gesture if he did something illegal, was caught doing it, and was killed for it.
You can see in the passages directly surrounding what you quote how obvious the Bible makes it. Paraphrasing and injecting context that would have been obvious to the Jewish audiences:
Jews: Should we pay taxes?
Jesus: This item was made by Caesar in the image of Caesar, therefore it's safe to assume it's Caesars property and if he wants it back you should return it to him. But you on the other hand were made in the image of God, you are God's property and you should return to Him.
Jews: Are you the King of the Jews?
Jesus: That is what you have called me.
Jews: This guy says we shouldn't pay taxes and that he's the messiah! Kill him!
Judge: “You brought me this man as one who was misleading the people. And after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him. I will therefore punish and release him.”
Jews: But we really really really really want you to kill him! And we'll probably have an uprising and cause a ton of trouble if you don't!
Judge: Screw it fine, I'll let this other murderer and insurrectionist we had previously held captive go free and crucify Jesus instead.
That's not the "Jews" my friend. That's all humans, ever, forming a mob, calling for the death of an innocent man, or woman, because he bothered them or their leaders.
In the Gospels, only John names the crowd as "Judeans". Mark, Matthew and Luke call them "the crowd", "the mob", or "the people". The people, who were, of course, Judeans, but then remember that so was Jesus, and so where the evangelists, and the other followers of Jesus.
[Pilate says to him "what is truth?". And having said that he came out again towards the Judeans and says to them "I find no cause in him" ("no cause" meaning: to punish him) .]
All of which of course has been interpreted in Christian tradition as "the Jews crucified Christ", and most likely formed the basis for European anti-semitism; the original, and true, anti-semitism. And having read the Gospels it's clear what Jesus himself would have thought of such traditions; how royally pissed off he would have been knowing the hatred that was roused in his name.
You're projecting hatred into a simple historical account, re-evaluate your biases.
The sources you think are helping your point are not, BTW. Which is as one would expect, given your point is basically: "This crowd of people referred to once as Jews, who lived where Jews lived and were interested in the teachings of a Jew who was at that point only talking to Jews and had strong objections to that Jew implying he might be their Jewish-prophesize messiah, those guys? Yeah, that crowd? There's no evidence they were Jews". It's on its face ridiculous, even more with the "evidence" you provide.
> he came out again towards the Judeans and says...
Yes, exactly.
> the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed
> the high priests they spurred the mob
Do you think the very small amount of non-Jewish Romans in the area would be interested in the spurring of the Jewish priests and elders?
There's nothing anti-semetic about understanding a historical event as it happened. Do you also think calling for ceasefire in Palestine is also anti-semetic?
I have no ill-will against Jews, I love them as I love all my neighbors. That means I'd stop and provide one food and lodging if I saw they were in need, but I'd share the gospel with them and ask them to repent and join the Kingdom while I was at it. Just as the Lord instructed.
Also, I fear you do not really understand anything the Bible really says – despite your love for the Greek – if you think European "anti-semitism" (a phrase invented by the nazis to "scientificize" their hatred which we should not continue to use, but I digress) is the original (and "truest", whatever that means) form of anti-Jewish sentiment. The Jews have been characterized as an ostracized, even enslaved, people from the absolute beginning (Book 2, at minimum) – well before the concept of "Europe" even existed. And most certainly well before humanity knew of Jesus.
>> You're projecting hatred into a simple historical account, re-evaluate your biases.
You misunderstand. I didn't accuse you of antisemitism. The point is that neither the evangelists, nor certainly Christ, intended the Jews to be blamed for his crucifixion; οὐ γὰρ οἴδασιν τί ποιοῦσιν.
But, as we say in Greek, my maternal language, όποιος έχει τη μύγα, μυγιάζεται.
If you were to have asked me instead of asserted at me, I'd have said there is no human blame to be placed. The Word took on human form specifically to fulfill the role of the sinless martyr and win over satan, and so He did.
I've heard speculation of demons in the midst of the crowd responsible for guiding the mob, that seems plausible but I do not know of a strong scriptural argument in favor of it.
None of that is to say that it is in any way inaccurate to attribute the words of the Jews to the Jews. This idea that we need to reshape history at every turn in order to not be interpreted as "anti-semeitic" needs to perish.
>the original source materials are different in treatment of believer/unbeliever
Those materials are pretty similar in this treatment between Judaism and Islam, religions which also were born with massive conquest. The difference between the two religions' national capabilities has little to do with this then, we can conclude.
Well, to be fair, Christianity became a thing only when it got the Roman Emperor, which happened also as part of a war. Until then, it was considered just another Jewish sect, impossible to distinguish from a dozen other Jewish sects or a dozen other non-Jewish mostly monotheistic sects.
As far as I understand, Judaism as a single organized religion (rather than a federation of ±12 tribes each with their own belief) became a thing as a consequence of the conquests of Alexander the Great, because the Hebrews needed a written code and history to demonstrate that they had a king (even if that king was immortal and invisible), otherwise they would have been treated as a subjugated barbarian tribe and lost the right to their own laws and customs.
So, I'm not sure that any conclusion can be drawn.
1. From what I've read, nobody (outside of Jews and Christians) cared or realized that there was a difference between Jews and Christians. So I stand by my words of "considered".
2. Absolutely, but until Constantine, Christianity was just one sect, competing with plenty of other sects.
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.
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.
Definitely. An example is Abdul Jabbar Abdullah[0]. Iraqi, not ethnically Arab, contributed to research at MIT. And filed under 'white[1] American' science.
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.
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
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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”.
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
"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."
I'm glad at least one other person read the article from start to finish before jumping into the comments to fan the flame war.
An interesting observation of today, is that secular technological progress is shifting to China. China accounts for the bulk of the world's atheist population. Some countries in the EU hover around the 20% mark, but nothing close to the 60% of 'convinced atheists' in China. Perhaps 100 years from now the west will have passed the zenith of it's technological dominance.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> he certainly believed that all 613 of the minutia-governing rules of judaism were important to obey
I think he rather cared about the few core principles behind the rules, no? From Luke 10, for example:
> On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."
Further complicated by the fact that he came to fulfill old promises and replace the old rules. From Luke 6, for example:
> One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, "Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?" Jesus answered them, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions." Then Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."
Or as summarized by his followers 20 years after his death and resurrection, in Galatians 3:
> Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
> I think he rather cared about the few core principles behind the rules, no?
Rather? You mean, like, "instead"? No. He gave some core principles that could be an aid in interpretation, and he used those principles to argue against a certain rabbinic extrapolation of the law- but he still wanted all jews to follow all 613 of the laws of moses.
> he came to fulfill old promises and replace the old rules
He came to fulfill the prophecies. But according to Matt 5:17-20, until heaven and earth disappear, not a single commandment will be abrogated, and woe unto him who teaches that even the least of the commandments can be ignored. Unless you think that was a typo, or maybe Jesus didn't mean it, or didn't know what he was talking about in that passage from matthew?
> Or as summarized by his followers 20 years after his death
As summarized by a single guy, who never met him, writing to non-jews- sure.
> 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.
The tradition of there being 613 mitzvot likely dates a century or two after the death of Jesus.
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.
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.
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).
> This why the US hegemony is so crucial, it is a counter balance to all of this non sense... I moved to the states at 13 and I have been here for the last 17 years.
Did you study US history? It's riddled with countless examples of when US hegemony has done the exact opposite. Middle East, Latin America, etc. (This is not a comment on US/Western values... Because I'd say a lot of US interventions around the world haven't exactly been congruent with those values).
So the point I'm trying to make is, for folks who are from other parts of the world but moved to the US (I also grew up in the Middle East), western values may seem great if _you live in the west_.
But if you still live in those other parts of the world, US hegemony may have been net negative for you.
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!
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.
Admittedly it’s a topic I shouldn’t have really touched on and me deleting the comment doesn’t mean I don’t stand by it I just regret expressing the opinion publicly. I’m sure the original comments are already archived somewhere since this made front page, anyone should be able to find them if they really want to.
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.
Fair enough. Though you said "birth rates of migrants with low IQs," implying we're comparing the children of migrants born in Europe against the native-born population.
IQ in a country is different from IQ of the children of migrants.
Also let's see what I get when I google "Mankind Quaterly".
> Mankind Quarterly is a journal that has been described as a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment", a "white supremacist journal", and "a pseudo-scholarly outlet for promoting racial inequality". - Wikipedia
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.
> 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?
> 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.
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.