Islam's Forsaken Renaissance
Mahathir bin Mohamad
Children often play a game where they sit in a circle. One whispers something to his neighbor, who then whispers that information to the next child, and so on, around the circle. By the time the last child whispers the information to the first, it is totally different from what was originally said.
Something like that seems to have happened within Islam. The Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, brought one – and only one – religion. Yet today we have perhaps a thousand religions that all claim to be Islam.
Divided by their different interpretations, Muslims do not play the role they once did in the world; instead, they are weakened and victimized. The Shia/Sunni schism is so deep that each side condemns followers of the other as apostates, kafir. The belief that the other's religion is not Islam, and its followers not Muslim, has underpinned internecine wars in which millions have died – and continue to die.
Even among the Sunnis and Shias there are further divisions. The Sunnis have four imams and the Shias have twelve; their teachings all differ. Then there are other divisions, including the Druze, the Alawites, and the Wahabis.
We are also taught by our ulamas (religious instructors) that their teachings must not be questioned. Islam is a faith. It must be believed. Logic and reason play no part in it. But what is it that we must believe when each branch of Islam thinks the other one is wrong? The Koran, after all, is one book, not two or three, or a thousand.
According to the Koran, a Muslim is anyone who bears witness that "there is no God (Allah) but Allah, and that Muhammad is his Rasul (Messenger)." If no other qualification is added, then all those who subscribe to these precepts must be regarded as Muslims. But because we Muslims like to add qualifications that often derive from sources other than the Koran, our religion's unity has been broken.
But perhaps the greatest problem is the progressive isolation of Islamic scholarship – and much of Islamic life – from the rest of the modern world. We live in an age of science in which people can see around corners, hear and see things happening in outer space, and clone animals. And all of these things seem to contradict our belief in the Koran.
This is so because those who interpret the Koran are learned only in religion, in its laws and practices, and thus are usually unable to understand today's scientific miracles. The fatwas (legal opinions concerning Islamic law) that they issue appear unreasonable and cannot be accepted by those with scientific knowledge.
One learned religious teacher, for example, refused to believe that a man had landed on the moon. Others assert that the world was created 2,000 years ago. The age of the universe and its size measured in light years – these are things that the purely religiously trained ulamas cannot comprehend.
This failure is largely responsible for the sad plight of so many Muslims. Today's oppression, the killings and the humiliations of Muslims, occurs because we are weak, unlike the Muslims of the past. We can feel victimized and criticize the oppressors, but to stop them we need to look at ourselves. We must change for our own good. We cannot ask our detractors to change, so that Muslims benefit.
So what do we need to do? In the past, Muslims were strong because they were learned. Muhammad's injunction was to read, but the Koran does not say what to read. Indeed, there was no "Muslim scholarship" at the time, so to read meant to read whatever was available. The early Muslims read the works of the great Greek scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers. They also studied the works of the Persians, the Indians, and the Chinese.
The result was a flowering of science and mathematics. Muslim scholars added to the body of knowledge and developed new disciplines, such as astronomy, geography, and new branches of mathematics. They introduced numerals, enabling simple and limitless calculations.
But around the fifteenth century, the learned in Islam began to curb scientific study. They began to study religion alone, insisting that only those who study religion – particularly Islamic jurisprudence – gain merit in the afterlife. The result was intellectual regression at the very moment that Europe began embracing scientific and mathematical knowledge.
And so, as Muslims were intellectually regressing, Europeans began their renaissance, developing improved ways of meeting their needs, including the manufacture of weapons that eventually allowed them to dominate the world.
By contrast, Muslims fatally weakened their ability to defend themselves by neglecting, even rejecting, the study of allegedly secular science and mathematics, and this myopia remains a fundamental source of the oppression suffered by Muslims today. Many Muslims still condemn the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kamal, because he tried to modernize his country. But would Turkey be Muslim today without Ataturk? Mustafa Kamal's clear-sightedness saved Islam in Turkey and saved Turkey for Islam.
Failure to understand and interpret the true and fundamental message of the Koran has brought only misfortune to Muslims. By limiting our reading to religious works and neglecting modern science, we destroyed Islamic civilization and lost our way in the world.
The Koran says that "Allah will not change our unfortunate situation unless we make the effort to change it." Many Muslims continue to ignore this and, instead, merely pray to Allah to save us, to bring back our lost glory. But the Koran is not a talisman to be hung around the neck for protection against evil. Allah helps those who improve their minds.
Mahathir bin Mohamad was Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1981-2003.

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By limiting our reading to religious works and neglecting modern science, we destroyed Islamic civilization and lost our way in the world.

This is not true. The state of affairs have little to do with scholarship and more with leadership. The problem is Islam itself and the Islamic state. There is no central authority like the Pope to issue or sanction religious edicts. Rulers are desots. They create their own rules to stay in power. People are oppressed; women are victimized; there is widespread poverty, while the rulers live in palaces. Women are not allowed to work which undermines economic development and contribute to a waste of resource and core competencies.

Tery: I get your point. But next time, take a walk in the schools of the muslim world..and see their science books. Do you know in Saudi a doctor spends time on fiqh--not thinking, but reading decrees passed by idiots..as a large part of his degree? While his western counterpart is busy studhing histology? Mahathir ain't down here..he knows these idiots. do you know the science academy in Pakistan wanted to study how to harness the energty of jinns? Don't forget that you are seeing Islam from a guyanese perspective..where our people have brains...but unfortunately, in the larger Muslim world in the middle east, they differentiate between those who go to religious school and those who go to normal school.

I agree that there is a high degree of fanaticism in the mideast part of the muslim world (which is actually a world muslim minority), but Islamic civilization was not destroyed by turning to religious works. Quite the opposite, it was destroyed by decadence.

Remember the man also said that Jews control the world. And the Jews are religious people who take their Torah seriously.

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Originally posted by Terry Ishmael:
I agree that there is a high degree of fanaticism in the mideast part of the muslim world (which is actually a world muslim minority), but Islamic civilization was not destroyed by turning to religious works. Quite the opposite, it was destroyed by decadence.

Remember the man also said that Jews control the world. And the Jews are religious people who take their Torah seriously.

COnsdier where he is coming from. Why do u tink Ataturk abolished the caliphate? The jackass imams did not want modern science.

If they would only listen..

Mental slavery.