I’ve stolen this comment from another thread, hopefully the owner wont sue me for this :o
“What other reason would explain the total lack of recent intellectual achievements in the Muslim world? Muslims represent 20% of the world population, but probably represent 1% of achievements in the sciences today.”
We often read about successes of great Muslim scholars / doctors / warriors etc and how well we did in all aspects of life. Tau phir what happened? When, why and how did the tables turn? Where do you as a Muslim think we stand today compared to rest of the world?
The downfall began with the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in the 13th century and the resulting neccessity of "closing the gates of ijtihad". Until then, the great scientific progress of the Muslims had been based in interpreting Islam to explain science. After the gates of ijtihad were closed, scientific progress became tricker and tricker because new ideas could not be accepted since ijtihad was no longer accepted - scientists became viewed as innovators.
With intellectual development thus stunted, economic and ultimately political strength declined.
Colonialism over the past 2 centuries prevented a recovery even as ijtihad sprung back into acceptance, whilst the dictatorships in the post-colonial era have been inefficient forms of government at promoting intellectual progress (poor governance leading to little wealth made available for education).
colonialism ended after WWII. How many patents are filed by people from Muslim countries vs. South Korea? Do you guys ever get tired of blame displacement?
Wanna know why US is the strongest and the richest country in the history of humanity? Because Americans work towards a better future, we always look at the future, we don't use failed models as inspiration. A lesson, the chinese and the INdians are learning fast.
i don't understand why people think that 'stunted' intellectual development causes political and economic decline. why is it that people always think of 'creating and developing intellectual outlooks' to gain political and economic stregth.
i just think that a time of great political and economic progress is what creates a situation that you are at the same time the emblems of intellectual progress.
put simply, kitna bhee chalo outlook aur philosophy change kar loa, if your country or your group, is not where modern technology is arising from and you are not economically prosperous, how on earth can you give the world modern ideas, jub tumharay control hee may nahee kay duniya may kiya ho raha hay.
muslims should simply realise that they are today simply mostly the developing 'third world' and unless they change this around by concentrating on the sciences and humanities, they can't ever regain their political and economic clout. no amount ofcreating funny 'progressive muslim' ideologies, can save the muslims from this uphill task.
Sabah Baji, people write volumes of books and do PhD thesis, writing about what went wrong in one war focusing on one country, and you require us to explain what went wrong with the Muslim world in the past 10 centuries in one post?
Usually it is a mixer of a lot of things and you can have a very wide range of differences of opinion about it all. “Every rise has a fall”, so became true for the Muslim world. Some might argue was the loss of rigidness in following the Islamic principles and then disagree on what are the core ‘Islamic principles’ to begin with. Some might say it is the lack of effort in pursuit of the modern technology … some can argue it was only a political fall out which made the economy go bad. So on and so forth ..
If someone forces me to give only one reason to explain what went wrong, I would say it was the collective culture that evolved out of the unthinkable successes that made Muslims as a whole more proud and less hard working.
