Islam is a religion too…
Published by Greg August 23rd, 2007 in Spirituality, Atheism and Religion, CommentaryChristians can be very annoying when the try to push their religion in our schools, across our dinner tables, into our laws, etc. But they don’t have a lock on it.
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Yusef Bey IV Son of Yusef Bey who died in 2003. YB IV has been arrested twice. |
These days, from a liberal (I’m a liberal) perspective, it is easy to see Muslims as getting a bad break. When “911″ happened, it was bad here in the Twin Cities. Many Muslims in this region are also a) immigrants and b) black. You may know of the Twin Cities as a place that has been very accepting of immigrants, but this did not apply to the Africans who came here recently. Somehow African immigrants were not met with the open arms of our fair state to the degree to which every previous immigrant group was. Not surprising. I mean, most Africans are black, and most Minnesotans are racists.
Anyway, as I was saying, from a liberal perspective it is easy to fall into the trap of being on the side of Muslims for the simple reason that they are getting the shaft lately, and partly as a reaction to the kind of right wing yahooism we saw especially in the early days (nearly a half decade ago) of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Like those two guys from Egypt or somewhere who were arrested while on their way to Florida because a waitress in some hot shop in the Carolinas heard them plotting a terrorist attack, all in Arabic. Only one of them knew any Arabic, and their discussion at the lunch counter was about trying to sell their crappy old car before they started school. But before that was all straightened out, their car was disassembled by the bomb squad.
At least they were not black. Had they been black, the probably would not have survived that episode. The police would have simply executed them on the spot.
Oh, and not to mention the abject panic that grabbed the right wing in congress when the Honorable Kieth Ellison … an African American Muslim (and thus, I suppose, a double threat) … came to town to represent the Fifth District.
But in the end, Muslims are every bit as annoying as Christians when they, you know, do annoying stuff.
Like hiding behind their religion to carry out rape, murder, torture, more rape, more murder, and kidnapping. You know the story about Your Black Muslim Bakery, right? If not, you can catch up here.
That link is to a Slate.com article by Christopher Hitchens asking “Why did the Oakland Police do so little about Your Black Muslim Bakery’s thuggery?”
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| Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland |
I heard a very interesting story that involved an interview with Hitchens, on NPR, discussing the horrific events going on in Oakland in connection with “Your Black Muslim Bakery.”
Here is a parahprase of this interview on Day to Day:
Hitchens made the point that Bakery owner, Yusuf Bey, had a long history of raping and abusing young girls, that he had a sort of mini- “Jonestown” going with a number of children with various young women, etc. etc. Bey was in fact charged with a number of crimes, but had the good graces to die instead of going to trial. (Following, I suppose, in the footsteps of Reverend Jim Jones, but at least not taking a thousand people with him….)
Hitchens specifically made the point that Your Black Muslim Bakery apparently had some kind of “political protection.”
He made the point that had it been called “The Aryan Nation” there would have been protesters outside the building, but given what is was called, they instead were afforded significant protection, as an apparent faith based organization.
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| Muslims behaving badly. Only the main Islamic nations of the Saudi Peninsula practice the presumably barbaric practice of beheading. Actually, beheading is On the other hand, execution is Except US of course. |
Now let’s be clear. Hitchens was saying something very specific: Your Black Muslim Bakery was enjoying a certain degree of political protection by virtue of the fact that it was masked as a faith based … i.e., connected to religion … entity. He never specified which religion, that was not the point.
The NPR interviewer first seemed to not understand at all, then seemed to feel that she understood what he was saying but really didn’t, because she asked: “You mean, you think the reason for apparent immunity from investigation was because they are Muslim?” (or words to that effect).
No, no, Hitchens said. Because they are faith based. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever. “This is a general problem in our society. If you can get yourself to be called reverend there is little you can’t get away with.”
I found it astounding and disturbing that Hitchens had to work so hard to make this utterly obvious point clear to an otherwise well informed and intelligent NPR interviewer. Very disturbing.
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| George Bush claims to have been inspired by God |
One of the most extreme recent examples of this, of course, is the Catholic Church actually asserting that it could take care of it’s own … don’t arrest or prosecute rapists who happen to be priests. We’ll manage that for you. Jesus-H-fucking-christ. Do you think IBM or, I don’t know, the Center for Peripheral Research could do that? “Oh, yea, that person who works for me and committed homicide or something … yeah, I’ll take care of that.” Or, more absurd but closer to the mark as an analogy: “Oh, yea, our CFO, he did steal all that money from the pension fund. But don’t prosecute him, we’ll just reassign him to Guam…”
The syphilitic, despotic crazy person who was running Your Black Muslim Bakery got away with many things, ranging from rape to torture to kidnapping to murder … because he hid behind a religious label. I wonder where he got the idea of using religion to mask mayhem and murder? Maybe he is just being a good American.
Which brings me to this very relevant non sequitur:
Letter to Nature:
Scientists should unite against threat from religion (Harris, Sam. Nature 448, 864 (23 August 2007) | doi:10.1038/448864a; Published online 22 August 2007)
Sir
It was genuinely alarming to encounter Ziauddin Sardar’s whitewash of Islam in the pages of your journal (’Beyond the troubled relationship’ Nature 448, 131–133; 2007). …
In his Commentary, Sardar [accepts] the claim that Islam constitutes an “intrinsically rational world view”. Perhaps there are occasions where public intellectuals must proclaim the teachings of Islam to be perfectly in harmony with scientific naturalism. But let us not do so, just yet, in the world’s foremost scientific journal.
Under the basic teachings of Islam, the Koran cannot be challenged or contradicted, being the perfect word of the creator of the Universe. To speak of the compatibility of science and Islam in 2007 is rather like speaking of the compatibility of science and Christianity in the year 1633, just as Galileo was being forced, under threat of death, to recant his understanding of the Earth’s motion.
…
Geronimo’s head was stolen
from its grave and brought
to Yale University for use
in barbaric rituals
by George Bush’s
grandfather.At a time when Muslim doctors and engineers stand accused of attempting atrocities in the expectation of supernatural reward, when the Catholic Church still preaches the sinfulness of condom use in villages devastated by AIDS, when the president of the United States repeatedly vetoes the most promising medical research for religious reasons, much depends on the scientific community presenting a united front against the forces of unreason.
There are bridges and there are gangplanks, and it is the business of journals such as Nature to know the difference.
Sadar’s piece is quite long, and not available to you unless you are a member of The Elite. So I reproduce small portions of it here so you can see what Harris is talking about.
…On Islam and science two things can be stated with some certainty. One, science thrived during the classical period of Islam; two, science in Muslim society has suffered a drastic decline. The difficulties arise in trying to ascertain when the decline began and what the causes were. Historians of science offer different dates and reasons.
It is tempting to blame Islam itself. There is something in the teachings of Islam, the argument goes, which does not allow science to take root in Muslim societies. This suggestion not only belies history but also the basic teachings of Islam, which proclaims itself as an intrinsically rational world view.
There are some 800 verses in the Qur’an that invite the reader to think and to examine the material world, using reason to understand nature. The sayings of the Prophet Muhammad reinforce these teachings, emphasizing that understanding comes through scientific endeavour. “An hour’s study of nature is better than a year’s prayer,” the Prophet declared. He directed his followers to “listen to the words of the scientist and instil unto others the lessons of science”. And the Prophet made an essential distinction: the Qur’an, as well as his own teachings, were an invitation to reason and study what exists and can be discovered — not scientific pronouncements in and of themselves.
Muslim Science
in Muslim Occupied
Europe.If the basic teachings of Islam are the same now as they were 1,400 years ago, what was it that drove science, learning, knowledge and creativity from Muslim culture? Historians have tried in vain to fix a date, to pinpoint what provoked the downward spiral. There are many factors to consider — including colonialism and wars — but in searching for the genuine causes of decline, I believe we must consider that the practice, if not the teachings, of Islam has changed. By recognizing this, I will argue, Islam can then become part of the solution.
…
[It seems] that real science has almost completely disappeared from Muslim consciousness. In an article last year, (Nature 444, 22–25; 2006) Ehsan Masood wrote “today’s Muslim states barely register on indices of research spending, patents and publications”. And he concludes the situation is not just bad; it is set to get worse.
However, I don’t think we need to be so pessimistic. The solution to any problem begins with a diagnosis; this diagnosis has already begun. The realization is growing that science is important not just for the prosperity of Muslim societies, for economic development, for misplaced political vanity or for acquiring nuclear weapons — but that it matters because it is vital for the recovery and survival of Islam itself.
This is the main message of the 2003 Arab Human Development Report on ‘Building a Knowledge Society’. It admits frankly that Muslims cannot merely continue to blame everything on colonialism and the West. Muslim states have failed, by their own Islamic standards, the challenge of independence. The report blames authoritarian thought, lack of autonomy in universities, the sorry state of libraries and laboratories, and under-funding in the Arab world.
Moreover, the report recognizes the conceptual challenges, calling, in particular, for ‘reviving ijtihad’ as the driving force for change. Indeed, it is now widely argued that science can play an important part not just in re-establishing ijtihad but in making Islam whole again, reuniting reason with revelation. This is the course that the Organization of the Islamic Conference — a 57-member intergovernmental organization of Muslim states — has set itself.
Signs of change can even be detected in religious institutions. The Al-Azhar University in Cairo, one of the most influential institutions of the Muslim world, for example, has now opened up to science. In colonial times, it abandoned science to become a religious institution concentrating on theology. Now it is rebalancing its curricula, emphasizing science as much as religion. Religious classes are making way for laboratories and science courses. Similar developments are taking place in Indonesia and Turkey.
There is no doubt that Muslims have a deep emotional attachment to their scientific heritage. But contemporary Muslim society needs more than nostalgic pride in a long-departed golden age. It has to reinstate the way of thinking, the critical consciousness and methodologies that made Islamic science possible; and it must make this way of thinking and knowing relevant to contemporary times. There is every reason to hope that the revival of science and a reform agenda for Islam in Muslim society will proceed hand in hand.
Beyond the troubled relationship; Ziauddin Sardar. Nature 448, 131-133 (12 July 2007) | doi:10.1038/448131a; Published online 11 July 2007
See further discussion on Pharyngula regarding this letter to Nature.
hmmm… I’m not sure I’d agree that YBMB was “protected” in that way… I mean, Bey WAS going to come to trial, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in the articles to indicate that the reason so many crimes had been committed was because they were tied to a faith based organization. It seems pretty typical for any random group of thugs.
Now I WILL also add that the Black Muslims involved were followers of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and NOT mainstream Muslims. In fact, this group would have been Muslim in name only. The ideologies that Muhammad preached were very different… and very far divorced from mainstream Islamic thought. Hitchens probably was aware of that distinction if he compared them to the Aryans… since we have plenty of “Christain book stores” and bakeries and automotive repair shops and so on. Having a Black Muslim bakery isn’t any more offensive than that, if it weren’t a front for a racist organization (something Hitchen’s perhaps didn’t elaborate on)
Sure, Islam is a religion too… no better and no worse than Christianity (for all that’s worth), but it’s no more accurate to judge Islam by this particular goup than it is to judge all Christians by the inquizition. Yeah, the POTENTIAL is always there, but in many cases, calmer heads do prevail.
While there’s nothing I like better than poking the fundies, there are still some religious in the world who are able to seperate their faith from their knowledge, and accept rational explainations for some things while still holding onto belief systems that they feel anchor them and provide some sort of emotional need. It would be nice to see societies that aren’t so emotionally crippled that they need a pretend magical friend to give their lives meaning, but so long as that meaning isn’t destructive, I see no reason to deny them their fairy tales.
Religion isn’t dangerous, just ignorant… EXTREMISM is dangerous.
Well, sort of. I don’t think Elijah Muhammad advocated rape, torture, kidnapping, etc. He was very very big on monogamy, I think. Bey III was the father of many children of various women he raped, according the the stories. So right, this is not about muslims. It’s about crazy people.
But, it’s about crazy people masquerading as religious people. Like all those fundamentalist home schoolers. But in the words of Paul McCartney in “Help” … “Say no more…”
But you know, it is very true that if you hold up a cross (or whatever) the authorities are much much less likely to get on your case. This happens all the time.
There is also clearly a bit of “they are only raping/killing/etc-ing their own” in this case, apparently.
Anyway, read Hitchen’s piece. He is just making the suggestion, not a very forceful argument, but I think he has a point.
I did read Hitchen’s piece, which is why I wrote what I did. Hitchens has a tendency to use extremism as the model for religion. What he fails to separate out is that not ALL religious follow every word of text as literally true and absolute. So there are those who look at wars, destruction, and atrocities in scripture as history, and not terribly relevant to faith today. Sure, technically they’re heretics… those who pick and choose… but there’s an awful lot of them out there. I find this kind of religious hypocrisy a lot less offensive than extremists who deny reality in order to embrace their beliefs.
Bey was to be brought to trial about a year after he was formally charged. That’s pretty darn fast for this type of case. As for the authorities less likely to get on your case… I’m not sure I 100% agree with that. From what I know of cults and religious extremists, so long as no one is harmed, the police can’t get involved. Here people were harmed. The question is, since it happened in the community, was it a case of the police looking the other way or the community members hushing it up so that it wasn’t reported.
When I lived in Atlanta, there was a religious group (Christian) who founded their church on the idea of bringing kids up on Christian principles. The group attracted a lot of families, and a lot of them were pretty well respected in the communities. The problem is that they advocated whipping the kids who disobeyed. Literally. I had kids come in with welts on their backs, but when I reported the situation (school process was to report to guidance) I was told this wasn’t a violation of local law, and to mind my own business. In that case, the woman I had to report to was a member of the community. Later, when nothing happened (and I’d been reprimanded twice for reporting this) I reported it to another staff member, and the report finally got out. My point it that it’s often members of the community that maintain silence, and not a case of looking the other way by outsiders.
Lastly, I don’t think Elijah Muhammad had much trouble with violence of any kind, so long as it was directed against “enemies”. As far as rape goes, that’s a legal term, and may include statutory rape. Not that it makes it better somehow, but the point is that the girls involved could well have felt this was some sign of honor, and that this wasn’t reported. It may well have not come to light until the group itself was investigated.
I’ll also agree that this wasn’t about Muslims, it’s about crazy people.
I think that a real dangerous notion in this article is that “Islam can then become part of the solution.” The solution to what? Uniting science with the false ( and murderous) premises of religion? Perhaps those who transcend Islam, but never those who adhere to it.
I have something I call the cream of the crop theory: the cream( in raw milk) rises to the top of the bucket. I am not CERTAIN that this is my theory alone, but likely I discovered this ‘cream’ principle. And, in religion, those who transcend it are at the top as well ( atheists–the people who DON’T kill for oil).
So, butter being delicious and fatty ( French creamery butter that doesn’t stick to your thighs), is different than whey, and whey is what the devout really seem to be to me. In the country we use whey to fatten pigs in the winter;-) Religion, and its need to control femal fertility is ensuring al of the little piggies get fat enough to send off into religious wars, whereas some piggies stay behind and die ripe fat old deaths because they are breeders, or more rarely, so smart they stay alive out of sheer personality…
Perhaps the most understated aspect of this discussion, everywhere, is the fact that the people who even know of the hybrid American black muslims ( who are a distinctly different group of people than the middle eastern variety of Sunni and Shiite, Sufi, etc), are also aware of the violent and murderous aspect of this sect of Muslim, but refuse to discuss it, stating silly, unscientific basis like”I am not black so I cannot discuss that issue as a black person” and other such fluff and fartery. This type of thinking leads the ingroup of whites at a loss to discuss the issue scientifically or rationally ( no doubt with typically white noble intentions) because they live in the hopes that ‘blacks will take it into their own hands’.
So it is not surprising that yet another reform and progressive minded African American ( the journalist) was gunned down by Black Muslims for dissenting opinions, and editorial content directed at the exact goal of enlightenment. Sadly, this is exactly what the American Black Muslims always resort to when challenged–the murder of dissent. They even have a ‘bodyguard’/paramilitary wing called the “Fruit of Islam”.However, because of American social convention–the white liberal tradition of denying black violence, overlooking the emerging new black racism, and black sectarianism(three black muslims, on the direct orders of Elijah Muhammad, murdered Malcolm X; also the Nation of Islam split in 1975 into two groups)–, the history of discrimination directed at ‘blacks’ is the most common pretext to ignore black issues(black being a word coined by Wallace Fard , the black Muslim founder), or paint white face on dark aspects of our culture.
“Elijah Muhammad at least 13 children by seven different women in addition to the eight he had from his wife”http://www.testallthings.org/nationislam.html
“Mother Clara demonstrated strength and courage in the face of virulent opposition to the Nation of Islam. They took their children out of the public school system and became pioneers for home schooling. But then home schooling was illegal. ”
Hooray for homeschooling;-P
http://www.finalcall.com/natio....._clara.htm
Greg is right, if you have a religious front you can get away with more. If all those pedophile priests had not been part of the Catholic church I think they would have been caught much sooner. It also happens to be true that if you are rich and influential in any way, it is a somewhat effective barrier against police action, unless what you have done is really blatant.
On Islam being part of the solution? Well in a way. If with the Koran you could turn believers from praying to studying nature, you might over the years change their whole philosophy and even eventually their belief system. But I would not hold my breath. Rage Boy shown below does not look as if he is about to trade in yelling at cameras for collecting butterflies. http://www.snappedshot.com/arc.....style.html
trCMF: Regarding Elijah … note I was speaking only of his teaching, not his actual philandering…
Sailor: Yes, and I don’t think most people would classify the Catholic Church as extreme or anything like that.
That “Rage Boy” think is hysterical. It’s a hoax, right? If its not a hoax then maybe there is only one guy who is really really mad….
Just find that guy, get him to take it down a few notches, and be done with the Jihad…
I don’t think Rage Boy is a hoax, I think he is a paid demonstrater (paid enough to get this teeth fixed too…)
In the last few months, I have seen several disturbing examples of serious scientific journals publishing fantasies about the Islamic “golden age” as if they were scientific fact. Some examples and my comments follow:
A. In an otherwise reasonable article about doctors and terrorism (NEJM,
August 16th, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/co.....?query=TOC) the author chose to insert a quote from the “Times” that panders to this trend. The quote states: “it (the terrorist attacks involving Muslim medics) also insults the pride that Muslims take in the achievements of their golden age, especially in the fields of medicine, surgery and pharmacology. Medicine owes more to Islam than to any other religion or philosophy. It was the great Muslim physicians of Spain and the Middle East who laid the foundations for today’s science; it was the writings and medical observations of scholars such as Ibn Rushd (Averroes, as he was known in Europe) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) that led directly to the medical advances of the past nine centuries.”
1. The idea that the work of so and so led directly to every advance in modern medicine in the next 9 centuries is true only in the sense that almost everything that happened in the interconnected world of Europe and the Middle East in the 12th century “led directly” to all that happened in subsequent centuries. Muslim physicians made some significant advances in medicine and, perhaps even more important, preserved and passed on the knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. But the idea of a “golden age” that is responsible for all progress in the modern world is simply the mirror image of the idea that Muslims are irredeemable barbarians who contributed nothing worthwhile to the world. Medieval Islamicate civilization, while undoubtedly civilized and progressive by the standards of the age, was not especially enlightened by modern standards. Slavery and torture were widespread, religious minorities faced discriminatory rules, the caliphate suffered repeated dynastic squabbles and civil wars, legal protections were minimal, women were kept out of public life and free enquiry was frequently suppressed at the whim of one or the other absolutist ruler. We should avoid the temptation to treat today’s Muslims as children who may get upset if you don’t throw them a few lines about the “golden age”. The intentions behind such “positive lying” are undoubtedly benign, but in a scientific journal we should stick to verifiable claims and (relatively) objective data.
B. A few months ago, the scientific journal “Nature” published an amazing piece of Islamist apologetics (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7150/full/448131a.html) by modern Islamist Ziauddin Sardar. Their intent was probably benign: maybe “Nature” hoped to foster some kind of modern, scientific culture in the Muslim world by promoting what they regard as benign and relatively civilized Islamism. But the article makes sweeping statements about history and historical categories (”classical Islam inspired science, progress in science made Muslims powerful, colonialism destroyed Islamic science, etc. etc”) and offers them up as established facts.
1. As pointed out above, the purported golden age was hardly as “golden” as Sardar imagines.
2. A case can easily be made that this knowledge and creativity had not really died down in the settled areas of the Middle East prior to Arab conquest and political unification under the Arabs provided an opportunity for bright individuals to make contributions to human knowledge, as it has in other times. Religion could (and sometimes did) hinder the process, but rarely directly aided it (unless you wish to credit religion for providing the social glue that held society together, but then again, that same role has been played by other religions and continues to be played by other ideological constructs).
3. The idea that Islamic nations were powerful because of some significant technological advantage and devotion to science is open to question. One can easily argue that when it came to making war, the Islamic caliphate never reached the technical level of the Romans, but then again, neither did their opponents. Even the Romans repeatedly suffered defeats at the hands of technologically inferior opponents because the difference in war-making technology between barbarian and advanced civilization was not decisive in those times (and may not be decisive in some ways even today).
3. The idea that “colonialism” somehow destroyed classical Islamic science is laughable. By the time the colonial powers arrived, there was no scientific tradition in any part of the Middle East. This is the most easily refuted of Sardar’s arguments and the fact that the editors of “Nature” are unaware of such elementary facts (or wish to ignore them) is deplorable.
C. In November 2006, “Nature” published a special on “Islam and Science” that was breathtaking in its superficiality (http://www.nature.com/news/specials/islamandscience/index.html). For example:
1. The issue was introduced with repeated references to “Muslim science”. Why is “Muslim science” a reasonable unit of analysis, but not “Hindu science”, “Buddhist science” or even “Christian science”? We are talking about 50 countries with little in common beyond the allegiance of varying proportions of their population to one somewhat heterogeneous religious tradition. It may be (as the most extreme detractors and most extreme adherents of Islam are equally eager to claim) that there is something special about the adherents of Islam and in their case (and their case alone), it makes sense to define them by religion rather than by geography, culture, ethnicity or any other criterion. But this is a fraught and complex debate and the editors of “Nature”, far from making a sensible contribution to it, do not even seem to be aware of its existence!
2. The editors state that: “There has never been a greater need for the measured, evidence-based approach to problems that comes from scientific training. Its contribution may be small amid the current turbulence, but it is all the more worth pursuing.” But having said that, none of the contributors (with the exception of Nader Fergany) exhibit any signs of having taken their own advice. Party slogans and pop-culture bromides take the place of any attempt at analysis. One contributor states “In the late nineteenth century, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had a favorable reception in Muslim countries.” how did he reach that conclusion? The great mass of Muslims was not even aware of the most elementary achievements of Modern science. The traditionally trained theologians had very little to say about Darwin and when they did find something to say, it was almost wholly negative. The acceptance of evolution by a few Western trained intellectuals hardly constitutes “favorable reception”. Equally careless statements are made about the history of “Islamic science”, the nature of politics in Muslim countries and the nature of Islam itself. The level of historiography and analysis on display would be an embarrassment in a good quality high school. In “Nature” it is downright shameful. One expects a higher standard of discourse from the premier scientific journal in the world.
3. The contributors repeatedly refer to a purported golden age of rationality and science in the Middle East about a thousand years ago. For example, asking Muslims to “reclaim… a great Islamic past in which new knowledge was valued and scholars were free to pursue all lines of enquiry”. The reality is much more complicated than that. Islam as a religious tradition is not unusually open to outside influences. Like all other religious traditions, it absorbed much from the older traditions that existed in its area of influence, but it was rarely willing to openly admit such cultural borrowing and the doctors of Islam (like their counterparts in other traditions) tended to do their borrowing surreptitiously. The civilization that resulted was not especially enlightened by modern standards though for a time, the culture was vibrant and creative and amidst the usual medieval cruelty and caprice, individuals (not all of them Muslim) made multiple original contributions to human knowledge. That is all very well, and is a valid area of inquiry and comment, but a serious journal like “Nature” should either steer clear of this topic or make a sensible and scholarly contribution to it. Repeating fashionable nostrums because they suit the propaganda needs of the day is justifiable in mass communication but is a disservice to science.
4. They state that in Iran and Pakistan, the rise of political Islam has been accompanied by increases in university education and scientific activity. What (if any) is the causal connection between these events? What would have happened to universities without the rise of political Islam? Again, is “Islam” even the correct unit of analysis in this case? Can the particular histories of Pakistan, Chad and Saudi Arabia be described by one common descriptor, “Islam”? One article displays a figure showing the greatest increase in scientific output has occurred in Iran and Turkey. Since one is avowedly “Islamic” and the other avowedly “secular”, an intelligent observer may be excused for wondering if something other than “Islam” explains or links these results. But the editors of “Nature” seem to have made a policy decision to divide the world into the “house of Islam” and the “house of unbelief” and having boxed themselves in, they end up making nonsensical comparisons between apples and oranges. One can have intelligent arguments about whether it is a good idea for a science journal to collect data on “Muslim countries versus non-Muslim countries” (without defining either), but the contributors to this issue do not make any of these arguments. Instead, they prefer to skirt all tough questions and gloss over all difficulties.
5. Most of the articles provide very little hard information. We learn little about the actual state of science in these countries and even less about the possible explanations for their lack of scientific development. Surely the editors of “Nature” could have made an effort to come up with some hard data or rethink their conceptual assumptions if no data could be found in the categories they had chosen?
Omar Ali MD