The Anti-Intellectualism of Islam

[Peter]

If you do a search of the Bible the word wrist doesn't show up. That's because as Mike pointed out it was considered part of the hand. Which only makes sense because a hand can't function without a wrist, but an arm can function without a wrist. The guy that was making this erroneous claim is being willfully ignorant. Since a simple google search yields the very information Mike shared. Muslims are in intellectual bondage. They are expected to take what is fed to them NO QUESTIONS ASKED. It is a dire situation.

Best to go to link.
http://answering-islam.org/authors/roark/rebuttals/zawadi/questioning1.html
A partial quote follows.

There are all kinds of questions that Muslims have been discouraged from asking.

Forbidding any question to be asked opens the door to forbidding lots of questions. There are reasonable answers that a child can understand in dealing with "who created Allah?" When you don't allow questions to be asked you force doubt into the sub-conscious and it doesn't go away.

The history of Islam has been one of anti-intellectualism (like the Roman Church). Islam inherited a vast body of information from the Greeks, but eventually did little with it. The answer is found in the educational system of early and later Islam.

Very early in the history of Islam knowledge was divided into two categories: 1) "Islamic science which included the study of the Qur'an, the traditions of the Prophet, legal knowledge (fiqh), theology (kaalam), poetry, and the Arabic language." 2) the natural sciences which were called the foreign sciences. As time went on the natural sciences were viewed as "a tainted enterprise." (Toby Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West, Cambridge U. Press, 1995, p. 68. All quotes following are from Huff as well.)

People who were at risk because of their studies in the natural sciences concealed their interests because they would be considered an impious person. (p. 69) The people who studied the Islamic sciences periodically denounced those who were studying the natural sciences.

The madrasas began to appear in the 11th century and were schools of Islamic sciences and rejected the natural sciences. Religious scholars regarded the natural sciences with suspicion.

Moreover, the educational system favored rote memory rather than critical thinking. When a student had memorized, or copied, or read the manuscripts available from his professor he was given an ijaza, an approval to teach others the same content.

It was presumed that memorized statements were true and could be learned without any process of thinking about the truth or falsehood of the statements.

Within the medieval Islamic intellectual life was the sharp distinction between the elite and the novice. The elite believed that the ordinary citizens, the commoners, were not capable of understanding the higher truths of philosophy or the Scripture. Averroes maintained that "a believer will know that to discuss those (philosophical) questions openly is forbidden by the Holy Law." (p. 82)

The conclusion of the matter is that reason was to be rejected for submission to Islamic law. There could be no criticism of Mohammed, the Qur'an, or the whole complex of Islamic science. In contrast, the West was influenced by the idea that man is created in the image of God and is therefore rational, and thereby can gain truth, a knowledge of good and evil by rational means. Man has a conscience in which he can make judgments and arrive at the truth. Islam did not develop a sense of conscience as the Greeks did, and as the New Testament taught, and therefore submission was the only path one could take.

"The greatest philosophical thinkers in Arabic-Islamic civilization after al-Ghazali never failed to cast doubt on the powers of human reason and to disparage the virtues of demonstrative logic; they insisted instead on the priority of faith (fideism) or on the unsurpassed authority of tradition (the Sharia and the Sunna). Reason for the orthodox was little more than common sense, and there was no acknowledgement of the idea that reason could reach new truths unaided by revelation. Innovation, in matters or religion, was equivalent to heresy:" (p. 117)

A general conclusion about knowledge in the Arabic-Islamic world is summed up as follows: "The madrasas were closed to the teaching of science and philosophy, and official Islamic law, fiqh, denied that all men had reason in the Greek and Platonic sense. Nor did Islamic jurisprudence have any place for the idea of conscience, that inner moral agency that could guide the actor in moral dilemmas. Moreover, there was no room for organized skepticism within Islamic thought." (p. 233)

The lack of progress in many ways relates to the model of Mohammed in one of the hadiths. It claimed that "the worst things are those that are novelties, every novelty is an innovation, every innovation is an error and every error leads to Hell-fire: In its extreme form this principle has meant the rejection of every idea and amenity not known in Western Arabic in the time of Mohammed and his companions, and it has been used by successive generations of ultra-conservatives to oppose tables, sieves, coffee and tobacco, printing-presses, and artillery, telephones, wireless, and votes for women." (p. 234)

The fact that there are million upon millions of Muslim today and only 8 have won Nobel prizes in the sciences as compared to nearly 200 Jewish winners reflects upon the issue of the kinds of knowledge that is not taught, nor asked, nor discussed in the Muslim educational system.

So I doubt the truthfulnesss of your statement that "Muslims are not only encouraged but obligated to seek knowledge and how can this be done besides asking questions....." The history of Islam would not validate that statement.

I wrote: "In Islam Allah is viewed as a far off distant God, a being to be feared, who is always ready to punish wrong doers."

[Peter]

In the words of a great world leader:

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live"The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities-but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa-and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome." - by Sir Winston Churchill - The River War, Vol. II, pp. 248-50, London; Longman, Green & Co., 1899

Certainly prophetic words, as Europe secularized over the following century and, as we witness today, is falling to Islam.

[Peter]

After posting a link to Muslim inbreeding I recalled this thread after I again read the devastating effects on intellect.
http://islamchristianforum.com/index.php?topic=1844.0

"Lowered intellectual capacity is another devastating consequence of Muslim marriage patterns. According to Sennels, research shows that children of consanguinous marriages lose 10-16 points off their IQ and that social abilities develop much slower in inbred babies.

The risk of having an IQ lower than 70, the official demarcation for being classified as “retarded,” increases by an astonishing 400 percent among children of cousin marriages.

(Similar effects were seen in the Pharaonic dynasties in ancient Egypt and in the British royal family, where inbreeding was the norm for a significant period of time.)

In Denmark, non-Western immigrants are more than 300 percent more likely to fail the intelligence test required for entrance into the Danish army.

Sennels says that “the ability to enjoy and produce knowledge and abstract thinking is simply lower in the Islamic world.” He points out that the Arab world translates just 330 books every year, about 20% of what Greece alone does.

In the last 1,200 years years of Islam, just 100,000 books have been translated into Arabic, about what Spain does in a single year. Seven out of 10 Turks have never even read a book.

Sennels points out the difficulties this creates for Muslims seeking to succeed in the West. “A lower IQ, together with a religion that denounces critical thinking, surely makes it harder for many Muslims to have success in our high-tech knowledge societies.”

Only nine Muslims have every won the Nobel Prize, and five of those were for the “Peace Prize.” According to Nature magazine, Muslim countries produce just 10 percent of the world average when it comes to scientific research (measured by articles per million inhabitants).

In Denmark, Sennels’ native country, Muslim children are grossly overrepresented among children with special needs. One-third of the budget for Danish schools is consumed by special education, and anywhere from 51% to 70% of retarded children with physical handicaps in Copenhagen have an immigrant background.

Learning ability is severely affected as well. Studies indicated that 64% of school children with Arabic parents are still illiterate after 10 years in the Danish school system. The immigrant drop-out rate in Danish high schools is twice that of the native-born.

Mental illness is also a product. The closer the blood relative, the higher the risk of schizophrenic illness. The increased risk of insanity may explain why more than 40% of the patients in Denmark’s biggest ward for clinically insane criminals have an immigrant background.

The U.S. is not immune. According to Sennels, “One study based on 300,000 Americans shows that the majority of Muslims in the USA have a lower income, are less educated, and have worse jobs than the population as a whole.”
Sennels concludes:

There is no doubt that the wide spread tradition of first cousin marriages among Muslims has harmed the gene pool among Muslims. Because Muslims' religious beliefs prohibit marrying non-Muslims and thus prevents them from adding fresh genetic material to their population, the genetic damage done to their gene pool since their prophet allowed first cousin marriages 1,400 years ago are most likely massive. (This has produced) overwhelming direct and indirect human and societal consequences."