After Mohammed’s death, half the tribes of Arabia left
Islam, no doubt heaving a huge sigh of relief and went back to their old religions.
Unfortunately for them, Islam did not die with Mohammed. His successor, Abu
Bakr, fought them in a long and bloody campaign, known as the Apostasy Wars. Using
the tactics of Jihad he forced them all once again, to submit to Islam.
Once they had reconquered Arabia, this handful of poor
and uneducated desert tribesmen burst out on an unsuspecting world. In just a
few decades they used Jihad to conquer most of the Byzantine Empire, (which was
the remnants of the Roman Empire in the East) the Persian Empire, all of North
Africa and Northern India.
They also conquered Spain in the West and as far as
Austria in the East. These represented the richest, most technologically and
intellectually sophisticated societies on the planet at that time. The cream of
the doctors, architects, scientists etc. were kept by the Muslim rulers as
dhimmis. They served Islam with their knowledge and abilities.
In the early days, some of the Caliphs showed an
appreciation of classical knowledge. At one point, a great many classical works
were translated into Arabic, particularly by the Mutazilites who held sway in
Baghdad. It has been argued that the unification of the Byzantine and Persian
empires and the enforced adoption of Arabic across the area, contributed to a
free flow of ideas. These factors are said to have underpinned what is known as
“The Golden Age of Islam”.
This theory may have some merit. It is worth noting however,
that even today, Persians (modern day Iranians) don’t speak Arabic, but Farsi.
This viewpoint also ignores the fact that these societies were already the
intellectual centres of the world. That they continued to be so for a time
whilst under Islamic occupation doesn’t necessarily mean we owe a debt of
gratitude to Islam.
This didn’t stop President Obama from making this claim
in his famous Cairo Speech. In it he told his audience, “It was Islam, at
places like Al-Azhar that carried the light of learning through so many
centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment”.
To understand the flaws in this line of reasoning, it
is instructive to see how the Golden Age ended.
Essentially the ruling Mutazilites were overthrown by
the much more dogmatic Asharites. Their reasoning was based more closely on the
Islamic Doctrine of predestination, which insists that every event in the
universe is directed personally by Allah.
They argued that although things
generally worked the same way, that this was merely habit. The classic example
given was that, “Just because the king is always seen riding through the
streets on a horse, doesn’t mean that he might not one day walk through his
kingdom.”
Since Allah orders every single atom in the universe
there is no reason why an apple falling off a tree tomorrow might not head up
instead of down. This is the opposite of the doctrine of “cause and effect”
which underpins all of today’s scientific understanding.
It seems unlikely that such an idea would prevail right
through to the present day without the support of Islamic Doctrine, but prevail
it did. This might help explain the following facts and statistics which modern
day, politically correct academics are having such a hard time understanding:
1)
In the last 700 years not a
single scientific invention or discovery of any significance has emerged from
the entire Islamic World[1].
2)
Each year, more books are
translated into Spanish than have been translated into Arabic in the last 1,000
years[2].
3)
Of the 1800 universities in the
Islamic World, only around one sixth has a faculty member who has ever
published anything[3].
Christianity and Judaism more than most other religions
are based upon freedom of choice. There have of course been times, particularly
when the Catholic Church was at the peak of its power, when the church worked
to restrict free thought.
Galileo was famously imprisoned by Pope Urban VIII
for demonstrating that the Sun and Stars do not actually rotate around the
earth. Despite this, the idea rapidly achieved widespread acceptance,
suggesting a culture which was highly receptive to logic and reason.
In contrast, when the brilliant Spanish Muslim
philosopher Averoes was banished to Morocco and had many of his books burned,
his work disappeared from the Islamic world. It was only when Christian
thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas rediscovered his writings, that its importance
was recognized.
The freedom to think, speak, discuss and challenge
orthodoxy is inherent in Christian doctrine but lacking in Islam. This (rather
than any genetic superiority or military advantage) must surely have been a
major factor in the explosion of scientific and technical knowledge which, from
the time of the renaissance until just a few decades ago, was almost entirely a
Western (Christian and Jewish) achievement.
Another problem besetting Islam was ecological
degradation. North Africa was not always a desert. Both Carthage and Egypt were
powerful North African empires which challenged Rome for supremacy. Empires
don’t flourish in deserts but in places of abundance. Egypt was the bread
basket of Europe, with its fertile soil and water from the Nile. Right across
the North of Africa was productive farmland.
The Arabs were not farmers, they were goat herders.
When they conquered North Africa the Muslim conquerors ran goats over the
farmland of the Christian dhimmis, who were powerless to stop them.[4]
Silt samples from the Mediterranean Sea bed suggest a rapid loss of topsoil and
corresponding desertification coinciding with this event. Circumstantial
evidence backs this up with signs of a rapid depopulation which would probably
be consistent with mass starvation and famine.
The overall result was long slow decline for Islam and
a steady growth in the power of Christian Europe. Militarily, this was not
evident for some time. Islamic armies and slave raiders played havoc for
centuries, particularly around the areas bordering Islamic lands.
Despite relentless attacks however, the Europeans
managed to hold the Muslims at bay. With all the richest empires now conquered
and the booty spent, the Muslims were left depending on the dhimmis for income.
Unfortunately for them, the Islamic system is designed to steadily force the
dhimmis to convert to Islam. This left a diminishing number of productive
people carrying a growing mass of non-productive people.
Islam’s long decline corresponded with the rise of the
Europeans. They were gradually freeing themselves from the traditional dogma of
the Catholic Church and building on the power of the scientific method of the
ancient Greeks. Although the Muslims supposedly brought this knowledge to
Europe, you would have to wonder whether it might have made the short hop from
the Middle East, even without the Muslim invasions.
Between about 1000 and 1300AD the Europeans answered a
plea for help from the Leaders of the Eastern Church, which was being
devastated by Jihad. One of the objectives of these “Crusades,” was to secure
the Holy Land (Israel) for pilgrims to visit. Whilst the Crusades were hardly a
great success, the fact that Kaffirs were able to reconquer and hold Muslim
lands for a significant period of time, was an incredible humiliation for
Muslims, who are still sore about it some 700 years later.
Attacks by the Turks on Eastern Europe posed a
significant threat right up to the 1700s. Slave raids by the Barbary Pirates
caused significant depopulation of coastal communities around Europe right up
to the 1800s.
As time marched on however and European technology advanced,
Islam found itself increasingly on the defensive. More and more Muslim lands were
conquered by the Europeans. The death knell for Islamic global power however, came
with the invention of the machine gun.
Having a large number of fanatically suicidal soldiers
gives you a competitive advantage if you are fighting with swords, bows and
arrows or even slow loading, single shot rifles. Once the machine gun was
introduced into conflicts however, the advantage of the cavalry or infantry
charge disappears completely.
This was a lesson painfully learned by all sides in WW1,
but for the Muslims, the industrialization of warfare took away the advantage
of all out Jihad. They were now left powerless in a new world. This world was ruled
by the nations with the most sophisticated technology and the highest levels of
industrial production and scientific education.
The Turkish Ottoman Empire was dismantled at the end of
WW1. It was then divided mainly between the British and French victors, who
would hold onto it until around 30 years later. At the end of WW2 they divided
it up and returned it to Arab control. The exception was an area of mainly
reclaimed swamp and desert. This area makes up around 1% of the Middle East and
has no natural resources. It was given to the Jews by the UN and is today
called Israel.
No comments:
Post a Comment