Develepero
Our case is already made in our lead and following articles - you disagree with their contention and now it's our responsibility to respond to your claims??
Uh, no!
Merely stating a proposition, hoever many times, is not the same as proving it.
In fact your argument is a circular one: you start out with the premise that Islam is responsible for the failure of Muslim societies; then you look at Muslim societies and say, since they have failed, the reason must be Islam.
What this circular argument ignores is the fact that Muslim societies also have something else in common: bad governance. And
other societies across time and space with bad governance have the same symptoms. Hence, the logical culprit is bad governance rather than your illogical premise.
And your "claims" are based on unsupportable contentions -- see, you would have to show that there was good governance from the advent of islam to the 13th century and that there was bad governance after, and that society was stable from the advent of Islam till the 13 century and unstable ever since - we wish you good luck in that difficult formulation. But I don't think you have grasped what the contentions in this thread are, that is why you are having difficulty with it
My 'claim' is that progress is correlated primarily to governance. That claim is supported by history: the history of India, Persia, China, Egypt, Greece, Europe, Middle East, etc., etc.
You, on the other hand, insist on attributing it to one particular factor, which surely plays a part, but is hardly the primary cause. As I said above, when one explanation suffices for other cultures across time and space, then it is unscientific to bring in extraneous factors for Muslims.
Your understanding of Renaissance, limited to a shallow notion of art, is regrettable - indeed, as is the understanding demonstrated of the ideas that led to the loss of the Church's religious claims about the nature of reality and how these then led to the Reformation.
Nonsense. I specifically wrote about the scientific and political factors involved. Unfortunately, you seem to confuse the Ranaissance with the Reformation, which makes it hard to discuss the subject.
My point was that the Catholic Church did not magically learn to behave itself, but was made increasingly irrelevant because of stable governance when people started focussing on the material world and were less inclined to listen to the Church.
But since it is clear to me, that your argument is not one that you can place on firm foundations - allow me to better explain the contentions in this thread and their relationship to the idea of epistemology:
1, From the advent of Islam to till the 13 century, the notion of the expansion of knowledge and innovation was a notion rooted among those who were trained in religious institutions - ALL the scholars were Madares trained. If you argue that this had nothing to with Islam, you would be in the position of denying thagt Madaress and the training imparted by them had nothing to do with islam - indeed you may as well argue that Islam has no relationship with Muslims. And if you argue that the events after the 13 century has nothing to do with islam, you would be in the same position - that is to say, if you choose either of those positions, you paint yourself in a corner.
2. With the defeat of the Mutazzalite and as a reaction to them, in particular with the help of Al-Ghazali and his attacks on reason and rational discourses, the idea of expansion of knowledge fell into disrepute. What's the proof, you ask? The obvious lack of expansion of knowledge and innovation - what better proof??
My dear muse, I don't care if they were educated in the ashrams of Calcutta. The whole point, which you assiduously avoid, is that Muslim scientists and artists flourished once the Caliphates were established, i.e. -- wait for it -- stable governance. And they faded from history once the Caliphates collapsed.
Our religious leaders even today are anti-science - they are anti innovation, they are anti the expansion of knowledge - WHY is this the case? for several reasons, but first because that they are persuaded by their training that their position is right - by and large Muslim populations do not value the idea of the expansion of knowledge - note that in post 22 Abdol karim uses the term "Speculative knowledge" as a synonym for science - why? what can we learn from this about what he thinks the nature of knowledge is and what the nature of science and the enterprise to expand knowledge, is??? And what is the stand of religious authorities with regard to "speculation"????
Again, I have to repeat what I wrote. There will always be a spectrum of religious thought. Religiosity thrives in times of bad governance. When times are good, people are more interested in
this world than the afterworld, and religious scholars become less relevant.
So, effectively, it doesn't matter what Islamic scholars think -- or rather, it matters only when people don't have enough to eat and these scholars get people's attention.
You have suggested that we look to education as a explanation -- again, you would be in the same problem as before, you would have ot explain why education succeeded from the advent of islam till the 13 century but failed afterwards and of course you would have to explain WHY
Already explained. The standard of education depends on the general level of governance.
Good stable governance => good education => progress.
And the opposite is also true.
The explanation we have offered, that is to say to look at epistemology, can help your argument - you will then argue that the CONTENT of education was such that the expansion of knowledge, the asking of why and how, the speculation, the leaps of imagination, were valued by religious authorities, that reason and rational thought was valued and that after the rejection of and in reaction to the Mutazzalite excesses, such enterprises were strongly discouraged -- in other words, you would be seeking refuge in our position.
The CONTENT of science education is fairly standard across the world. Yet the results vary. Again, correlated with -- you guessed it!
