In the 1960s you could have made the same argument about cultural collapse in China, India, or South Korea, yet look at them today.
And clearly, it's not Islam related based on Turkey's (automotive and aerospace) and Malaysia's (semiconductors and microelectronics) relatively decent R&D capacity despite being upper middle income countries neighboring R&D laggard non-Muslim countries (Greece and Thailand respectively), or even Iran and their fairly robust STEM R&D base (looking at you Shiraz University of Technology).
My hunch is probably moreso institutional, or lack thereof.
The Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos from the mid-19th century to present due to colonialism (both Western European and Ottoman), the World Wars, and the subsequent decolonization movement, and institutions weren't able to be sustained.
Those that did thrive (Cairo University, Baghdad University, Damascus University, American University of Beirut) in the early to mid 20th century were purged - either by the Baathists or due to the Lebanese Civil War.
> could have made the same argument about China, India, or South Korea in the 1960s
China, sure. They rapidly course corrected. India and Korea didn't have prominent anti-intellectual movements.
> Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos from the mid-19th century to present due to colonialism
It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age.
> it's not Islam related based on Turkey and Malaysia's relatively decent R&D capacity
The article seems to go out of its way to restrict its arguments to the Arabic world, not Islam in general. (Its arguments are also strongest in the pre-modern world, proximate to Islam's Golden Age.)
>It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age
It would even fairer to say that that region had advanced civilization, huge riches, stable organization, culture (music, poetry, literature), science (math, chemistry, engineering), and so on, at times when America was still inhabited by the Native Americans, and Western Europe was a bunch of barbarian tribes living in shitholes, and well after it started turning into medieval shithole fiefdoms (and then started using the loot of the Americas and the advantage of gunpowder to dominate).
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India's two poorest states today used to have relatively decent British built universities (Lucknow University, Allahabad University, Patna University) that stood toe-to-tow with top universities like Delhi University, Calcutta University, Osmania University, Panjab University etc.
But in the 1960s-70s, Ram Manohar Lohia [0] lead an anti-intellectual, pro-Hindi and anti-English [1],and anti-rich movement in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that lead to the rise of Lalu Prasad Yadav (Bihar) and Mulayam Singh Yadav (UP), both of whom were directly influenced and in some cases mentored by Lohia.
It was under those two CMs that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar began falling behind the rest of India in the 1980s-2000s period.
With Korea, I guess we can point to Juche but then again I said South Korea, and not North, though university purges were very common during the democracy movement of the 70s and 80s leading to events like the Gwangju Uprising.
> It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age
I mean you can characterize any region like that. For example, arguing that China was basically in a century long civil war from 1850-1950, along with the multiple other chaotic periods in between dynasties. For example, China didn't even catch up to Iraq's developmental indicators until the 2000s
> The article seems to go out of its way to restrict its arguments to the Arabic world, not Islam in general.
Turkey, a relatively new country that is the successor of the Ottoman empire, was founded with secularism in mind. You can learn more about that by reading about the Ataturk reforms.
And the rest of the reply is just as equally uninformed.
Ik about Laiklik and Kemalism, yet it was under Erdogan that Turkiye became a leader in UAV research.
And it's not like Islamists weren't attending METU or ITU - look at Erbakan (the founder of the precursor of the AKP and Erdogan's and other Turkish Islamic politicians mentor) and the fact that he was a western trained MechE professor and researcher. Or Turgut Ozal (a Power Engineer and Professor by training) in the 1980s and his hardcore Naqshabandi leanings, as a number of Kurds in Turkiye like him are. Heck, ITU was an Ottoman institution.
And that doesn't explain modern Malaysia which was basically a product of the Hertog riots, and Tunku Abdul Rahman and Mahatir Mohammad's Islamist leanings.
Heck, Erdogan is literally a Turkish knockoff of Mahatir Mohammad - who was the original Erdogan back in the 1980s-2000s
Yeah, if anything Turkey's a damning argument against Islam-influenced governance. Ataturk dragged Turkey into the 20th century with his secular "reforms". I put quotes there because the word seems like an understatement.
For a US audience, imagine if George Washington had declared that we were abandoning Latin script for Cyrillic (Ataturk brought in Latin script to replace Arabic), abolished common law for civil law (islamic law to civil law), banned people from wearing crucifixes in public (banning the fez, headscarves, veils), made the weekend a Sunday-Tuesday affair (thursday-saturday became the European friday-sunday), gave women the right to vote, gave us all an additional name (introduction of surnames), and put us on the Chinese calendar (Gregorian).
“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"
The Christian world has long acknowledged a division between the secular and the religious. Islam never has. This has hurt both scientific and industrial progress, and the productive synergy between the two.
You are oversimplifying the Enlightenment. One needs only to look at Galileo, and the current unnecessary shenanigans of American Christians over evolution to know that Christianity does have a problem with science.
Likewise, islam was never meant as a religion. It was always a state, for the vast majority of it's adherents, and power and law came first and second, with religion a very distant concern. The center point of islam was always the state, power and army, not religion (just as it is in current islamic countries, the state holds TIGHT control over religion, not the other way around).
People call it a religion now ... because there isn't a state anymore (called a caliphate). Which illustrates yet again how central the state is to islam. All states, including the Taliban and the Mullahs of Iran, radically de-emphasize the fact that the islamic religion demands a global central totalitarian state, and emphasizes nationalism and, for example, the difference between Iranians and Pakistani. Every 6 year old Iranian knows how "their islam", first, centers around the Iranian state, and second how pakistani islam is totally wrong. Plus, of course, how trying to work out those differences, as the "one islam" ideal in the religion itself would seem to reward, is treason.
Galiloe's story is a bit more complicated than that.
The Inquisition didn't have any problems with Galileo and his theories until he started insulting the pope in one of his books. Then the theories became a pretext to pressure him.
God is not concerned with trivialities of coinage. Indeed it is explicitly stated that `No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.` (mammon meaning "riches"), which draws a clear distinction between those things that are of Godly import versus those that are merely earthly.
The point is that those items made in Caesar's image should be considered his property and reunited with him, whereas those items made in God's image (humanity) are God's property and should be reunited with Him.
> “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"
That was a statement made when the Caesar was a nonbeliever, he ruled the world, and he could literally crucify you for believing the wrong stuff. It just means "Folks, let's not pick up an unnecessary fight against someone who can casually murder all of us."
Of course, later the Ceasars became Christian, and the line became a lot more blurry.
"The Christian world has long acknowledged a division between the secular and the religious."
ALL religions _insist_ on a divide between secular and religious by definition.
I still consider myself a Christian but please do better than a quote from the big guy that related to taxation to somehow justify some sort of scientific related superiority over another Abrahamic religion.
I think you also managed to miss-quote the usual translation because I think it should be something like: "Render unto Caesar that which is due to Caesar and render unto God those things that are due to God". My Aramaic is a little rusty and I don't have access to the original docs so I might be wrong.
I think that the issue at the moment that JC was quoted talking about was regarding taxation and JC used that to make a rather neat earthly/heavenly analogy. Earthly taxation unto Caesar and Heavenly "taxation" unto God.
I think that twiddling an analogy about a situation that happened roughly 2000 years ago into another analogy, might be a step too far.
Not Aramaic, but Greek. Aramaic was the language spoken by the people in the Gospels, but the Gospels themselves were written in koine Greek, the English of the ancient world. The sentence says "Give to Cesar what is Cesar's and to God what is God's" in my translation. From Matthew, 22:16-22.
Like you point out the context was taxation. Pay Cesar's taxes and give prayer to God, would be a more liberal translation.
To summarise, the Pharisees wanted to trap jesus, by making him say something foolish. So they sent their students accompanied by Herod's followers (Ἡρῳδιανῶν) to, well, troll Jesus, first praising him for speaking the truth without fear, and then asking him if he was asking to be given Cesar's tribute (κῆνσον Καίσαρι). Jesus asked them to show him the coin of the tribute and when they showed him a dinar (δηνάριον) he asked them: "Whose is this image and legend?". They replied it was Cesar's. And Jesus said " Then give to Cesar what is Cesar's and to God what is God's". And thus doth he shutte them uppe for goode and there was much rejoicement. Liberal translation.
The previous passage (Matthew 22:1-14) is the parable of the wedding, where Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven with a human kingdom, whose king throws a wedding party for his son. This could be mistaken as Jesus claiming for himself an earthly kingdom, with him as king. This would have displeased Cesar.
So the Pharisees were trying to entrap Jesus and make him look like he wanted to rebel against Rome, why they took Herod's followers with them. But this backfired and they gave Jesus the chance to allay any suspicions that he was anything else but a religious leader, and to say that he was not a threat to Rome. He did that by invoking a powerful symbol of Cesar's power: his coin, with his face and name on it. Jesus was a smart guy!
Also: hey, I can still read that. Blimey! Been a while...
Neither has the Jewish world which still produces lots of scientific output.
I think Occam's razor applies here. Stable, long-lasting governments and ample resources make a nice bed for technological and scientific output anywhere.
I think Christianity had the fight with science during Copernicus and Galileo. Islam never had that fight. And since Islam claimed to be the last and final word of god, it became really hard to change it.
Galileo's story is a bit exaggerated in the popular zeitgeist. Promoting heliocentrism vs geocentrism as a scientific theory may have annoyed the church, but he was ultimately granted permission to publish his findings. It was the satirical, strawman representation of the geocentrist (and, by extension, the Pope) as a complete idiot in his published dialogue that got him imprisoned.
Could it be because the Roman Empire directly shaped all the official precepts in the belief system through the ecumenical councils ran by the Roman emperor?
I don't think Jesus was huge on the division between church and state. That line in particular was interpreted by his audience to mean they should render no tax to Caesar in Luke.
Where do you read that in Luke? To me, the message is very clear:
This item is Caesar's. It has his name on it, his face on it, he made it, it's his. You should return it to him.
You, on the other hand, are God's. You are made in His image, and you should return yourself to Him.
And I do not see any evidence of the listeners rejecting the message. Instead we get a jumpcut to a seductress.
>the original source materials are different in treatment of believer/unbeliever
Those materials are pretty similar in this treatment between Judaism and Islam, religions which also were born with massive conquest. The difference between the two religions' national capabilities has little to do with this then, we can conclude.
Well, to be fair, Christianity became a thing only when it got the Roman Emperor, which happened also as part of a war. Until then, it was considered just another Jewish sect, impossible to distinguish from a dozen other Jewish sects or a dozen other non-Jewish mostly monotheistic sects.
As far as I understand, Judaism as a single organized religion (rather than a federation of ±12 tribes each with their own belief) became a thing as a consequence of the conquests of Alexander the Great, because the Hebrews needed a written code and history to demonstrate that they had a king (even if that king was immortal and invisible), otherwise they would have been treated as a subjugated barbarian tribe and lost the right to their own laws and customs.
So, I'm not sure that any conclusion can be drawn.
The New Atlantis is a journal founded by the social conservative advocacy group the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
It is not peer-reviewed on scientific topics.
Both of the previous statements are taken verbatim from Wikipedia.
It’s very well-written, but it’s pushing a very specific set of talking points that seem suspiciously close to some standard conservative talking points. Make of this what you will.
The author seems to use Islam, Arab and Arabic (the language?) as synonymous, and lumps in Muslim (but non-Arab) scientists under the Arabic umbrella. That makes as much sense as lumping in Chinese-Americans under "English scientists." Looking into the author of the article it makes it seem like this entire article is an intentionally malicious submarine[0] rather than something out of incompetence. But I digress.
Arabs, as in the ethnic group, have never been scientifically driven. It has always been the Ajam (Greeks, Jews, Persians, Afghans, Turkics, Lebanese, Armenians, Assyrians, and so on) in Arab-majority lands that have contributed academically.
Modern countries with multicultural backgrounds (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) had their scientists leave the countries for places like the US and UK in the first half of the 20th century due to better facilities, and the second half (as scientific contribution became more inclusive) has been in a state of chaos that also led to significant brain drain. The only actually stable countries are exclusively Arab theocracies (Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) that have no historical or cultural inclination, let alone drive, towards the sciences.
The non-Arab lands that the author's description of the "Arabic (sic) world" seems to lump in includes Iran -- which is effectively under siege and prevented from contributing -- and Turkey, which does do a great deal of contribution.
Definitely. An example is Abdul Jabbar Abdullah[0]. Iraqi, not ethnically Arab, contributed to research at MIT. And filed under 'white[1] American' science.
This is a great read. The anti rationalist movement was a huge turning point. I worry some of it is happening in the US right now. And once you go down that path, there is no turning back. There is no polemicist like Christopher Hitchens in the US right now in popular culture and that worries me too.
Postmodernism was an anti-rationalist movement which ascended highly in the US and did affect the sciences even (it itself was influenced by the seemingly impossible new quantum scientific breakthroughs going on).
Rationalism and anti-rationalism don't change the laws of science, the learning / teaching of it, or it's value in output. They are just fads which ebb and flow as humans and their environments do
Hope you are right but I remember for example in the 2000s global warming wasn't a right or left wing ideology. It was what scientists were saying and everyone believed them. Now scientists are trusted far less.
> anti rationalist movement was a huge turning point. I worry some of it is happening in the US right now. And once you go down that path, there is no turning back
There is a lot of turning back. China turned back from the Cultural Revolution, for example. Hell, Europe was anti-intellectual until the Calvinist/Lutheran pushback.
The mongols sacked Baghdad, killed everyone, and destroyed all institutions of higher learning and the people working in them. Then the age of exploration permanently shifted the center of world power away from the Middle East and the Silk Road. Then European colonial powers subjugated those territories. Afterward, Saudi Arabia started exporting its very "particular" (to put it lightly) branch of Islam. Sprinkle some US intervention and you get to the present day.
Not much of a turning away, but a systematic and violent dismantling of institutions of learning (and a supporting culture) that took centuries to build. No surprise that those conditions didn't happen again in the same place. In most places, such a golden age never happens.
Readit News
In the 1960s you could have made the same argument about cultural collapse in China, India, or South Korea, yet look at them today.
And clearly, it's not Islam related based on Turkey's (automotive and aerospace) and Malaysia's (semiconductors and microelectronics) relatively decent R&D capacity despite being upper middle income countries neighboring R&D laggard non-Muslim countries (Greece and Thailand respectively), or even Iran and their fairly robust STEM R&D base (looking at you Shiraz University of Technology).
My hunch is probably moreso institutional, or lack thereof.
The Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos from the mid-19th century to present due to colonialism (both Western European and Ottoman), the World Wars, and the subsequent decolonization movement, and institutions weren't able to be sustained.
Those that did thrive (Cairo University, Baghdad University, Damascus University, American University of Beirut) in the early to mid 20th century were purged - either by the Baathists or due to the Lebanese Civil War.
China, sure. They rapidly course corrected. India and Korea didn't have prominent anti-intellectual movements.
> Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos from the mid-19th century to present due to colonialism
It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age.
> it's not Islam related based on Turkey and Malaysia's relatively decent R&D capacity
The article seems to go out of its way to restrict its arguments to the Arabic world, not Islam in general. (Its arguments are also strongest in the pre-modern world, proximate to Islam's Golden Age.)
It would even fairer to say that that region had advanced civilization, huge riches, stable organization, culture (music, poetry, literature), science (math, chemistry, engineering), and so on, at times when America was still inhabited by the Native Americans, and Western Europe was a bunch of barbarian tribes living in shitholes, and well after it started turning into medieval shithole fiefdoms (and then started using the loot of the Americas and the advantage of gunpowder to dominate).
Rome and Byzantium excluded of course.
Parts of India did.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India's two poorest states today used to have relatively decent British built universities (Lucknow University, Allahabad University, Patna University) that stood toe-to-tow with top universities like Delhi University, Calcutta University, Osmania University, Panjab University etc.
But in the 1960s-70s, Ram Manohar Lohia [0] lead an anti-intellectual, pro-Hindi and anti-English [1],and anti-rich movement in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that lead to the rise of Lalu Prasad Yadav (Bihar) and Mulayam Singh Yadav (UP), both of whom were directly influenced and in some cases mentored by Lohia.
It was under those two CMs that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar began falling behind the rest of India in the 1980s-2000s period.
With Korea, I guess we can point to Juche but then again I said South Korea, and not North, though university purges were very common during the democracy movement of the 70s and 80s leading to events like the Gwangju Uprising.
> It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age
I mean you can characterize any region like that. For example, arguing that China was basically in a century long civil war from 1850-1950, along with the multiple other chaotic periods in between dynasties. For example, China didn't even catch up to Iraq's developmental indicators until the 2000s
> The article seems to go out of its way to restrict its arguments to the Arabic world, not Islam in general.
Fair enough.
[0] - https://theprint.in/opinion/great-speeches/when-ram-manohar-...
[1] - https://www.epw.in/journal/2009/48/discussion/lohia-and-lang...
Deleted Comment
And the rest of the reply is just as equally uninformed.
And it's not like Islamists weren't attending METU or ITU - look at Erbakan (the founder of the precursor of the AKP and Erdogan's and other Turkish Islamic politicians mentor) and the fact that he was a western trained MechE professor and researcher. Or Turgut Ozal (a Power Engineer and Professor by training) in the 1980s and his hardcore Naqshabandi leanings, as a number of Kurds in Turkiye like him are. Heck, ITU was an Ottoman institution.
And that doesn't explain modern Malaysia which was basically a product of the Hertog riots, and Tunku Abdul Rahman and Mahatir Mohammad's Islamist leanings.
Heck, Erdogan is literally a Turkish knockoff of Mahatir Mohammad - who was the original Erdogan back in the 1980s-2000s
For a US audience, imagine if George Washington had declared that we were abandoning Latin script for Cyrillic (Ataturk brought in Latin script to replace Arabic), abolished common law for civil law (islamic law to civil law), banned people from wearing crucifixes in public (banning the fez, headscarves, veils), made the weekend a Sunday-Tuesday affair (thursday-saturday became the European friday-sunday), gave women the right to vote, gave us all an additional name (introduction of surnames), and put us on the Chinese calendar (Gregorian).
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
The Christian world has long acknowledged a division between the secular and the religious. Islam never has. This has hurt both scientific and industrial progress, and the productive synergy between the two.
People call it a religion now ... because there isn't a state anymore (called a caliphate). Which illustrates yet again how central the state is to islam. All states, including the Taliban and the Mullahs of Iran, radically de-emphasize the fact that the islamic religion demands a global central totalitarian state, and emphasizes nationalism and, for example, the difference between Iranians and Pakistani. Every 6 year old Iranian knows how "their islam", first, centers around the Iranian state, and second how pakistani islam is totally wrong. Plus, of course, how trying to work out those differences, as the "one islam" ideal in the religion itself would seem to reward, is treason.
The Inquisition didn't have any problems with Galileo and his theories until he started insulting the pope in one of his books. Then the theories became a pretext to pressure him.
The point is that those items made in Caesar's image should be considered his property and reunited with him, whereas those items made in God's image (humanity) are God's property and should be reunited with Him.
Deleted Comment
That was a statement made when the Caesar was a nonbeliever, he ruled the world, and he could literally crucify you for believing the wrong stuff. It just means "Folks, let's not pick up an unnecessary fight against someone who can casually murder all of us."
Of course, later the Ceasars became Christian, and the line became a lot more blurry.
ALL religions _insist_ on a divide between secular and religious by definition.
I still consider myself a Christian but please do better than a quote from the big guy that related to taxation to somehow justify some sort of scientific related superiority over another Abrahamic religion.
I think you also managed to miss-quote the usual translation because I think it should be something like: "Render unto Caesar that which is due to Caesar and render unto God those things that are due to God". My Aramaic is a little rusty and I don't have access to the original docs so I might be wrong.
I think that the issue at the moment that JC was quoted talking about was regarding taxation and JC used that to make a rather neat earthly/heavenly analogy. Earthly taxation unto Caesar and Heavenly "taxation" unto God.
I think that twiddling an analogy about a situation that happened roughly 2000 years ago into another analogy, might be a step too far.
Not Aramaic, but Greek. Aramaic was the language spoken by the people in the Gospels, but the Gospels themselves were written in koine Greek, the English of the ancient world. The sentence says "Give to Cesar what is Cesar's and to God what is God's" in my translation. From Matthew, 22:16-22.
Like you point out the context was taxation. Pay Cesar's taxes and give prayer to God, would be a more liberal translation.
Edit: full text of the relevant passage.
15 Τότε πορευθέντες οἱ Φαρισαῖοι συμβούλιον ἔλαβον ὅπως αὐτὸν παγιδεύσωσιν ἐν λόγῳ. 16 καὶ ἀποστέλλουσιν αὐτῷ τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτῶν μετὰ τῶν Ἡρῳδιανῶν λέγοντας Διδάσκαλε, οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἀληθὴς εἶ καὶ τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν ἀληθείᾳ διδάσκεις, καὶ οὐ μέλει σοι περὶ οὐδενός, οὐ γὰρ βλέπεις εἰς πρόσωπον ἀνθρώπων· 17 εἰπὸν οὖν ἡμῖν, τί σοι δοκεῖ; ἔξεστιν δοῦναι κῆνσον Καίσαρι ἢ οὔ; 18 γνοὺς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὴν πονηρίαν αὐτῶν εἶπεν Τί με πειράζετε, ὑποκριταί; 19 ἐπιδείξατέ μοι τὸ νόμισμα τοῦ κήνσου. οἱ δὲ προσήνεγκαν αὐτῷ δηνάριον. 20 καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς Τίνος ἡ εἰκὼν αὕτη καὶ ἡ ἐπιγραφή; 21 λέγουσιν· Καίσαρος. τότε λέγει αὐτοῖς Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ. 22 καὶ ἀκούσαντες ἐθαύμασαν, καὶ ἀφέντες αὐτὸν ἀπῆλθαν.
https://biblehub.com/nestle/matthew/22.htm
To summarise, the Pharisees wanted to trap jesus, by making him say something foolish. So they sent their students accompanied by Herod's followers (Ἡρῳδιανῶν) to, well, troll Jesus, first praising him for speaking the truth without fear, and then asking him if he was asking to be given Cesar's tribute (κῆνσον Καίσαρι). Jesus asked them to show him the coin of the tribute and when they showed him a dinar (δηνάριον) he asked them: "Whose is this image and legend?". They replied it was Cesar's. And Jesus said " Then give to Cesar what is Cesar's and to God what is God's". And thus doth he shutte them uppe for goode and there was much rejoicement. Liberal translation.
The previous passage (Matthew 22:1-14) is the parable of the wedding, where Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven with a human kingdom, whose king throws a wedding party for his son. This could be mistaken as Jesus claiming for himself an earthly kingdom, with him as king. This would have displeased Cesar.
So the Pharisees were trying to entrap Jesus and make him look like he wanted to rebel against Rome, why they took Herod's followers with them. But this backfired and they gave Jesus the chance to allay any suspicions that he was anything else but a religious leader, and to say that he was not a threat to Rome. He did that by invoking a powerful symbol of Cesar's power: his coin, with his face and name on it. Jesus was a smart guy!
Also: hey, I can still read that. Blimey! Been a while...
I think Occam's razor applies here. Stable, long-lasting governments and ample resources make a nice bed for technological and scientific output anywhere.
You are aware that Copernicus was a Catholic priest, right?
The article literally describes that fight in the backlash to Al-Mamum's oppressive secularism.
Christianity was birthed with persecution by the Jews and Romans.
Christianity had its whack at that too in later centuries, but the original source materials are different in treatment of believer/unbeliever.
Buddhism is similar (persecution by Hindus).
I'd argue this affected cultural appetite for tolerance, expression, etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests
Those materials are pretty similar in this treatment between Judaism and Islam, religions which also were born with massive conquest. The difference between the two religions' national capabilities has little to do with this then, we can conclude.
As far as I understand, Judaism as a single organized religion (rather than a federation of ±12 tribes each with their own belief) became a thing as a consequence of the conquests of Alexander the Great, because the Hebrews needed a written code and history to demonstrate that they had a king (even if that king was immortal and invisible), otherwise they would have been treated as a subjugated barbarian tribe and lost the right to their own laws and customs.
So, I'm not sure that any conclusion can be drawn.
It is not peer-reviewed on scientific topics.
Both of the previous statements are taken verbatim from Wikipedia.
It’s very well-written, but it’s pushing a very specific set of talking points that seem suspiciously close to some standard conservative talking points. Make of this what you will.
Arabs, as in the ethnic group, have never been scientifically driven. It has always been the Ajam (Greeks, Jews, Persians, Afghans, Turkics, Lebanese, Armenians, Assyrians, and so on) in Arab-majority lands that have contributed academically.
Modern countries with multicultural backgrounds (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) had their scientists leave the countries for places like the US and UK in the first half of the 20th century due to better facilities, and the second half (as scientific contribution became more inclusive) has been in a state of chaos that also led to significant brain drain. The only actually stable countries are exclusively Arab theocracies (Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) that have no historical or cultural inclination, let alone drive, towards the sciences.
The non-Arab lands that the author's description of the "Arabic (sic) world" seems to lump in includes Iran -- which is effectively under siege and prevented from contributing -- and Turkey, which does do a great deal of contribution.
[0] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Jabbar_Abdullah
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...
Rationalism and anti-rationalism don't change the laws of science, the learning / teaching of it, or it's value in output. They are just fads which ebb and flow as humans and their environments do
There is a lot of turning back. China turned back from the Cultural Revolution, for example. Hell, Europe was anti-intellectual until the Calvinist/Lutheran pushback.
Not much of a turning away, but a systematic and violent dismantling of institutions of learning (and a supporting culture) that took centuries to build. No surprise that those conditions didn't happen again in the same place. In most places, such a golden age never happens.
TIL that 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years. That is fewer than the number translated in Spain in one year. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3e2xho/til_th...>