Here’s an interesting comparison. Despite making up 23% of the world’s population, there are only 12 Muslim noble laureates while Jews make up less than 0.2% of the global population, they have 185 noble laureates.
The figures are in addition to the wide perception that Muslims are resistant to science. Is this all a Western propaganda or is there some truth behind it? To answer this, there’s a need for introspection to understand what went wrong and where.
The right place to begin is by looking at the history of Muslim scholarship and intellectual thought.
The golden era between 8th and 13th centuries stands out in this regard as the period under which Islamic civilisation flourished through science and reason. But soon after, there were two main ‘assaults’ on the Muslim mind which began the stagnation of Islamic scholarship and the civilisation.
The first assault was on the concept of
Ijtihad – Islamic legal term for independent reasoning. It allowed for the use of logic and reason in matters which were not clear in the Quran. However, during the 10th century, most Sunni schools of thought concluded that all major religious legal matters have been settled hence there was no need for Ijtihad anymore. The decision effectively closed the ‘door of Ijtihad’, confining Muslim intellect to that time and space.
The second assault came during the 12th century when Islamic civilisation underwent a moral and intellectual crisis. As highlighted by Muhammad Abdul Qadeer in his book Pakistan: Social and cultural transformation in a Muslim nation
, two groups of Muslim thought – Mut’ azalites (supporters of reason and logic) and Ash’arites (antagonists of logic and rational thinking) – had an intense debate about their ideals. Due to numerous historical factors, the Ash’arites doctrine was accepted by the Muslim world and hence started the decay of reason in Islamic world.
It’s amusing to see the western scholarship claim sole monopoly of reason while in reality, West’s “enlightenment project” might have never happened had it not been for earlier Muslim thought. The very fact that Thomas Aquinas – influential medieval thinker remembered for reconciling faith with reason – used Muslim scholar Ibn Rushd‘s defence of Aristotelian philosophy in his work shows the impact that early Islamic thought had. It is pertinent to mention that Ibn Rushd – often Latinised as Averroes – was a Mut’azalite and has been described as the founding father of modern thought in Western Europe because he reintroduced the continent to the writings of Aristotle.
If reason was ever in contradiction with Islam, why would Hazrat Umar (RA) use it and suspend the punishment for theft – sanctioned by Quran – during droughts? He certainly chose to think about the exceptional circumstances that people were facing and deduced that it would be inhumane to cut off hands of individuals who stole during the time of famine and drought. This, simply put, is called reasoning which seems to have disappeared or at least declined within Muslim scholarship and our society as a whole.
Muslims should think about the two major events mentioned above which separated reason and rationale from religion when they heard or read about slow or no growth of Islamic thought. Having suffered for years because of this stagnation, it is time Muslim scholars and the Islamic society make the conscious decision to address irrationality that has crept into our minds. They must take steps which will make science and reason the cornerstones of new Muslim thought.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1258346/two-events-history-put-flourishing-islamic-world-reverse-gear/
The history of
resistance to Islamic traditionalists/Ulama by Muslim rationalists can be traced back to the latter half of the first century of Hijra ... The "Qadariyah" were the first ones to challenge traditionalists` doctrine (which defended the actions of Ummayad Caliphs) during the Ummayad Rule ...
But the most important rationalist movement was the Mu’tazila Movement (a continuation of Qadariyah) .. The Mu’tazila movement rose to become the dominant movement within Islam during early Abbasid period (2nd century Hijrah) .. A lot of the scientific advancements we think of today associated with the Abbasids were under Mu’tazila influence , it produced a lot of great thinkers , philosophers , scientists , mathematicians etc. itself and inspired many others ... this movement helped greatly diversify Islamic intellectual and theological discourse ...They have had a tremendous impact on the history of the Muslim world ... And later , it inspired the thinkers of European Renaissance ..
One might wonder that why don't we know much about this great rationalist movement of Early Islamic Era... All we know about them today is from what their "adversaries (Traditionalists/Muhaditheen) have written about them . Even the name Mu’tazila (meaning those who withdrew) was given to them by the traditionalists . The Mu’tazila referred to themselves as "Ahl al-Adl wa Tawhid" , (people of Justice and Tawheed) .....History tells us that it was the Ulama and traditionalists who, with the help of ruling elite, persecuted Mu’tazila, declared them heretics, burnt their books and wrote lies about them (as was proven later) .. The traditionalists vehemently opposed the Mu’tazila as their standing in the society was jeopardized .. The reason of their opposition was not religious or theological, but purely political .. It was Caliph Mutawakil who supported ulama ... Mu’tazila were branded heretics during his rule and
Ulamas` orthodoxy was adopted as the "state religion" ... !! The Mu’tazila ideals were unacceptable to both , Ulama and the Ruling elite ... Mu’tazila challenged the social status of Ulama (connected with their religious hegemony) , ...... and the Mu'tazila ideology would encourage public to ask questions regarding the wrong deeds of the ruling elite !!
Two Men at the forefront of "Anti Mu’tazila campaign" were Ahmed Bin Hanbal and Ismail Bukhari ... !!! And very few might know that the main reason behind compilation of Hadith Collections (going against the tradition maintained by the first eight generations of Muslims) was "codification of traditional Islam" to counter the Mu’tazila ideology , which was far more developed and logical ...
@haviZsultan
For centuries Mu’tazila were believed to be a "heretic" sect ; as the people who preferred human wisdom over revelations ... a lot was written against them by the traditionalists ... until the latter part of the 20th century, when the 11th-century texts of Abd al-Jabbar al-Qadi were unearthed in Yemen .. Abdul Jabbar was a famous Mu’tazila theologian ... And his works clearly show that
Mu’tazila were not "secular rationalists" (as traditionalists would want us to believe) but "theological rationalists" who preferred revelation of God over everything else .... !! Had Mu’tazila survived , Muslims today would have been "centuries" ahead ... Probably leading the world ......... We lost to the Islamic clergy once , this time we need to defeat them .. once and for all ...
The irony is if an individual today started practicing the Mu'tazila sect openly, in the vast majority of Muslim countries he would be charged with blasphemy and probably jailed if not executed, and yet regardless of sect all Muslims seem to take great pride in the scientific and philosophical achievements achieved during the Abbasiya period (Mu'tazila period). It was the Abbasiya who built the house of wisdom (bayt al hikma) which attracted scholars such as al Khwarizmi, al Kindi, Sind Ibn Ali (from Mansura, Sindh, Pakistan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sind_ibn_Ali). There is no doubt that the intellectual decline of the Muslim world begins with the sacking of Baghdad by Hulegu's horde, whilst almost simultaneously, Qurtuba (Cordoba) was lost in the reconquista to the Catholic monarchs of Castille and Aragon. The intellectual centers of Islam fell and the literalists seized the opportunity. I sometimes think how different the Muslim world would be had this sect of Islam continued dominating the Muslim world.
Islamic history is a stage on which two fundamentally opposed intellectual forces have been struggling for pre-eminence — a dynamic, scientific rationalism (Rationalists) pitted against a reactionary, obscurantist gnosticism (Traditionalists)....
The Mu'tazila had a tremendous impact on the Muslim world ... The Abbasid Caliph Mamun (a Mu'tazila himself) greatly patronized them .
The House of Wisdom (Arabic : Bayt al-Hikma)
was a library, translation institute and school established in Abbasid-era Baghdad, Iraq. It is considered to have been a major intellectual center during the Islamic Golden Age. The House of Wisdom was founded by Caliph Harun al-Rashid (reigned 786–809) and culminated under his son al-Ma'mun (reigned 813–833) who is credited with its formal institution ....
During the reign of al-Ma'mun, astronomical observatories were set up, and the House was an unrivaled center for the study of humanities and for science in medieval Islam, including mathematics, astronomy, medicine, alchemy and chemistry, zoology and geography and cartography. Drawing on Indian, Greek, and Persian texts, the scholars accumulated a great collection of world knowledge, and built on it through their own discoveries. By the middle of the ninth century, the House of Wisdom was the largest repository of books in the world
This house gave to the world people like Ibn e Haitham (the first true scientist), Mathematicians like Khawarzimi, Philosophers like Kindi, Physicists like Al Jazari, Physicians like Hunain, Astronomers like Sind Ibn e Ali and this list is very long ... Al Ma'mun, al Mu'tasim, and al Wathiq followed the sect of Mu'tazili, which supported mind-broadness and scientific inquiry, until the time of al-Mutawakkil , who endorsed a more literal interpretation of the Qur'an and Hadith. The caliph was not interested in science and moved away from rationalism, seeing the spread of Greek philosophy as anti-Islamic .... Traditionalists had won ... Mutazila were branded heretics . They were persecuted , there books burnt ... A great rationalist movement in Islam had met its unfortunate end !!
Then came the Asharites ... who were neither traditionalists , nor rationalists and they claimed to be the people who followed the middle path ... the greatest of them is believed to be Imam Ghazali .. (though one can argue that he was not an Asharite) .. And his greatest opponent was Ibn e Rushd ; the Rationalist ...
Unlike traditionalists , Ghazali didn`t believe that Islam was anti science .. And unlike rationalists , he rejected all non Muslim philosophies (sciences) ...
Ghazali came to the conclusion that :
“But to all of them (Philosophies/sciences), despite the multiplicity of their categories, cleaves the stigma of unbelief and godlessness.” (McCarthy,Freedom and Fulfillment 70)
The implications of this skepticism are quite far reaching when looking at the fundamentals of religious teachings in the context of the explosion of scientific knowledge in the modern era .
German orientalist
Eduard Sachau rightly blamed the theology of Ash'ari and its biggest defender Ghazali specifically for the decline of Islamic science starting in the tenth century, stating that
the two clerics were the only block to the Muslim world becoming a nation of "Galileos, Keplers and Newtons." ........
On the other hand ,
Ibn e Rushd , the prominent Maliki jurist , and the chief opponent of Ghazali`s philosophy , could not inspire his fellow muslims much , but he had a great impact on Western European circles ... So much that he has been described as the
"founding father of secular thought in Western Europe" ....
Today majority of the Muslims hold Al Ghazali in high regard but they follow the ideology of Ibn e Rushd (though unknowingly) ... Ghazali believed that "
Non Muslims` scientific knowledge" should be rejected by the Muslims .. Ibn e Rushd believed that Knowledge is knowledge , no matter from whom it comes ... And today we all study "western sciences" without even thinking for once that it is against Islam ... !!
Also in traditionalist sunni islam (asharite as well) , Khilafat is necessary , just like Quran and Sunnah .. It were the Mu'tazila who believed that Khilafat is not necessary and could be replaced by any system of government depending on circumstances ..
Muhammad Asad was the
religious advisor to Jinnah .. The conservatives claim that Jinnah had set up a
department of Islamic reconstruction under Muhammad Asad ... Thus it is proven that Jinnah wanted an Islamic Pakistan ... Only if the conservatives knew that this is a self defeating argument ... !!
Muhammad Asad has been accused of showing extreme bias towards Mu'tazila in his writings , by the contemporary scholars .. !! one can easily guess what kind of "reconstruction" Jinnah was interested in ... And Mu'tazilite/rationalists are founding fathers of western secular thought .. ... keeping this in mind if one reads all the speeches delivered by Jinnah, and one can easily understand that what
Javed Iqbal meant when he said ...
"it is self-evident that there is complete harmony in the views of Quaid-i-Azam and Allama Iqbal regarding the establishment of a modern Islamic democratic welfare state in Pakistan. The founders of Pakistan certainly had a very clear vision. They approved of a definite interpretation of Islam on which they founded Pakistan, and according to them, it was only through that interpretation that the Muslims could possibly realize their objectives in the newly created Muslim state."
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@TankMan
I have been banned from that thread for expressing views that the PDF management thought were
provocative and
inflammatory , therefore replying here
I agree with most of what you have written except for what you wrote about Iqbal. Also we can discuss
neoliberalism in detail on some related thread.
Regards
(hint: read post #78 and #80!)
