June 16th, 2011 8:53

Why is the Arab so world backward?

For quite a while I have been mulling over the backwardness of the Arab world. Why is it that the Arab nations have achieved absolutely diddlysquat over hundreds of years? A report suggested that it produces fewer books in a year than Greece, which itself is not noted for any form of creativity except creative accounting. Buried somewhere in this phenomenon is a clue to the way we are now.

When most of Europe was going through the Dark Ages, the Ottomans were the keepers of ancient science and technology and foremost in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, navigation et al. But during the great scientific revolution in Western Europe between the early 16th century and the dawn of the 19th Ottoman scientific progress was non-existent.

So what went wrong?

Needless to say the answer was all the time right under my schnozz.


That is not so blindingly obvious as it seems. There appeared to be no problems for the first 600 years of Islam. If you were a bright young man in 1100 you would not go to Oxbridge; they were just coming out of the egg. You took yourself off to Baghdad, or Damascus (the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world) or Aleppo or wherever. Islam and learning co-habited happily, and thrived by attracting scholars from elsewhere (and by exploiting the brilliance of the Jews, whom they regarded as people of the Book’ as administrators , bankers and so on).

But towards the end of the 11th century the Men with Beards began to decree that the study of Greek philosophy was incompatible with the Koran, and that it was blasphemous for science to attempt to explain the mysteries of the world which were the sole province of God. Books were burned, scholars persecuted, printing banned and the only observatory was demolished 5 years after its completion, in 1580. There was not to be another until 1864. Astronomy was blasphemy and the most famous astronomer was beheaded for his sins.

The Muslim clergy snuffed out all scientific study. Progress was non-existent for the next 400 years. In the 19th century the earth as centre of the universe around which revolved the sun, moon and stars was still the accepted wisdom.

It is possible that a major handicap is that Islam has experienced no Reformation; and it has no episcopate to govern the Islamic religion and to give an authorised interpretation of the Koran. The upshot is that Islam is driven by a text written 1300 years ago for a primitive desert people and it has not been re-interpreted in the context of modern times because, as the Word of God, it cannot be. The fundamentalists would have us all return to medieval times.

Meanwhile Europe had Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, Lavoisier, Herschel, and many more geniuses who led Europe into the Age of Enlightenment and consequently the Industrial Revolution.

And here we are!

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