Islam’s forsaken renaissance _Mahathir bin Mohamad

[Muhammad]

Friday, November 11, 2005

Islam’s forsaken renaissance —Mahathir bin Mohamad

Many Muslims still condemn the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kamal, because he tried to modernise his country. But would Turkey be Muslim today without Ataturk? Mustafa Kamal’s clear-sightedness saved Islam in Turkey and saved Turkey for Islam

 

Children often play a game where they sit in a circle. One whispers something to his neighbour, 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 victimised. 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 12; their teachings all differ. Then there are other factions, including the Druze, the Alawites, and the Wahhabis.

 

We are also taught by our ulema (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 those with scientific knowledge cannot accept them.

 

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 –are things the ulema trained only in religion 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, occur because we are weak, unlike the Muslims of the past. We can feel victimised and criticise the oppressors, but to stop them we need to look at ourselves. For our own good, we must change. We cannot ask our detractors to change, so that Muslims benefit.

 

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 Arabic numerals, enabling simple and limitless calculations.

 

But around the 15th 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. 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 modernise 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 civilisation and lost our way in the world.

 

The Koran says, “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. —DT-PS

Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad was prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003

 

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20051111story_11-11-2005_pg3_6

[Paragon]

By contrast, Muslims fatally weakened their ability to defend themselves by neglecting, even rejecting, the study of allegedly

secular science and mathematics

. This myopia remains a fundamental source of the oppression suffered by Muslims today.

In general terms, I agree with Matathir, but in anylitical terms, I must disagree. One needs to understand that the term 'secular' has gained the companionship of 'science' and 'mathematics' under a difficult epoch of history, in which 'Christianity' tyranized the sources of knowledge (especially science) for those who wished to go beyond the confines of the Bible. Prior to 16th century, Christian theology controlled the ways of knowing and Christian knowledge on cosmology and cosmogony was held as absolute truth. This was made even more worse by 'literal reading of scripture' (a symptom evident with some Muslims today) of some theologians, which in turn produced overall restrictions of scientific knowledge. When Galileo asserted the earth isn't the center of heavens and the sun doesn't move, in essence he was challenging the validity of the Holy Scriptures of Chritianity. This made Cardinal Bellarmine, writing in 1615, to cry "to affirm that the sun is really fixed in the center of the heavens...is a very dangerious thing..injuring our faith and making the sacred Scripture false" (Woodward).

 

To give you some idea of the knowledge which science stood to falsify, the Christian Bible claimed to contain the history and knowledge of the world, from its creation to the present day, in a chronological order. There was only one problem though, this historical chronology didn't contain 'modernity' in its chaptors! For that reason, Christianity fought the agents of modernity (science)dubbing them blasphemous and to some extent heretics. When the advocates of science were in a position of power, they invented the term we now refer to as secular, in a nutshell to denote the liberation of science (or knowledge or later the state) from gripping dogma of Christian theology. So when one hears secular knowledge or theological knowledge, categorically, the history behind their division should be borne in mind.

 

The Qur'an did not restrict the source of all knowledge nor did not claim to contain chronology of the sort the Bible laid claim to. While the Qur'an is the absolute truth for Muslims, unlike the Bible, Islam encouraged the seeking of knowledge through Ijtihaad. Muslims never had the problems faced by Christians when generating epistemic knowledge on many matters, but the sort of restrictions Muslims had later faced came in the form of the closure of the gate of Ijtihad. If this gate is to be re-opened, Muslims can achieve modernization. There wouldn't be a need for the use of the term 'secular' because modernization has its own theories (i.e. modernization theory). Secularism isn't necessarilly a pre-condition for modernization, since even in academia the term 'secular is increasingly becoming associted sociological (and not modernization) matters with a negative connotation such as moral decay and spiritual emptiness. In short 'securalism' is purely the product of Christianity, just as Ijtihad (though it possess different set of relations to Islam than that of the secular) is the product of Islam.

 

My point for providing this explanation is that even senior Muslim figures mistakingly use phrases such as 'secular science and knowledge' without paying much attention into them. If modernization or development is the endeavour of concerned senior Muslim figures, they should atleast be careful about confusing even more already confused Muslim countries. Lastly, Kamal Ataturk hasn't done anything for Islam in Turkey. His opression was only counter-productive in that it helped the Turkish mass remain firm on their religion and eager for the return of non-secular state. That is why they elected the current government hoping they would change political affairs to the more Islamic plain.

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

^^ Good to see you back Paragon.

[Paragon]

Thank you Libaax . Gud to see you too.

[Yoonis_Cadue]

The renaisaunce of Islam has long been awaited and inshallah Islaam will soon dominate the whole world.

[Muhammad]

Salaams Paragon,

 

on the 'secular' point you are correct in your explanation, I took it by 'allegedly' he ment what others consider to be 'secular'.

 

I agree with you on the point of ataturk. even though I disagree with Mahathir on many points, I always respected his straight forwardness, unlike the the rest of the puppets and the labo-wajiilayaal!