Today’s subject is the claim that Islam has nothing to do with limitations on scientific advancements, but it is the people who apply Islam wrongly, that create problems. This approach is on the rise whenever the problems about religion (in any context) continue to appear on the media. Because religion does not want YOU to think there is any problem with the system itself. So, supposedly, the problems with Islam, Muslims and regions having a Muslim population as the majority are all results of the wrong application of the truly holy and all-good Islam.
This article will not be strictly academic, but I need to point out some assumptions, derivations and facts.
Assumptions:
God, the God, a god, Gods, or gods should be “perfect.” So, when I say “god”, I am talking about an entity that is perfect in “every sense”. Anything other than this definition can be reduced to at least a prophet in this article, in whatever religion such a definition of “god” would be…
Genetic differences, physiological differences or any other types of differences among people in different parts of the world or in different societies are not statistically significant. So, a person A can be 15% more intelligent than a person B “by birth”, considering any other factors irrelevant on the improvement of intelligence. However, a considerably large population A of people cannot be 15% (or even 5%) more intelligent than a considerably large population B of people on average. In our examples, this concept of a “considerably large population” will consist of hundreds of millions (maybe billions?) of people, which also makes the average coincidental or non-coincidental difference almost trivial.
A religious system requires complete dedication, therefore, a religious person should satisfy “all” of the requirements of a religion, without any exceptions. Which basically is the basic understanding of the concept of belief.
Problems:
Islam has been around for about 1400 years (this might also be considered a problem, but, wait). Fact: Regions where Muslims constitute a significant ratio of the population are technologically and economically* less advanced when compared to the rest of the world.
Religion has an “it’s true, because I say so; what I say should be true, because I say that it should be true” approach to almost anything, and this problem is not limited to Islam only. This is why I meant by “self-approval”. We will come back to this later.
“Any” problem directly or indirectly connected to religion is explained by religious people as a wrong humanly approach to an otherwise perfect system.
Religion not only justifies and approves itself -mostly without referring to any other method -, but also claims credit for anything that can be explained(!) with religion.
Religious people are so blinded by social norms and assumptions that they mostly denounce their religion partly or entirely, in order to protect it.
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If indeed intellectual or social limitations had not been created by Islam, this limitation problem that is claimed to be the result of a wrong application of an otherwise perfect system should have been at least partly solved in about 1400 years. A world with a certain level of average advancement, a world that creates two (actually more, but let us stick with Muslim and non-Muslim for a while) significantly different levels just by leaving two considerably large groups of people in cooperation, conflict, or at least communication between each other is just not logical. If it were logical, and if indeed, the problems had nothing to do with Islam itself, but stemmed from wrong applications (human error), there would only be one explanation to this:
Just by chance, two considerably large societies that had been approximately equal in terms of social and intellectual advancement before the rise of Islam suddenly changed. Then, for about 1400 years, not 1, not 5, not 100, but 1400 years, all the people that were born on the Muslim side were born with significantly lower intellectual capacities, while the people on the other sides of the world were born with superhero powers that enable them to understand the secrets of the universe. With the current level of differences between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world suggests nothing more than this assumption, if we are to say that Islam had actually nothing to do with problem, but it is the people!
Or, we could say, that it is indeed the people’s fault and intellectual evolution was not successful in the Muslim world because of geographic, or in short, physical conditions that those people face, or they just made wrong and significantly different decisions without any apparent reasons. So, it is not a year, or a decade, or a century. It is almost 1400 years. A perfect and non-problematic religious system, especially if it has exact instructions up to the point that tells you with which segment of which finger you should wipe your butt after going to the toilet, would not allow the same problems to last for about 1400 years. A person can change the world in a few years. Especially in this era, we started to see many examples of such individuals. So, literally billions of people having/creating the same problems for fourteen centuries and never learning from collective experience, or never even accepting that there actually is a problem is just not logical and not possible by random societal development, or human error. If a dog burns its paw on the oven, it will not approach that oven again. It just does not make sense for any living creature that has advanced cognitive and communicational capabilities to make the same mistake repeatedly over its life, and transferring that mistake to its offspring to be repeated again and again for fourteen centuries. There should be a non-primitive, and/or imposed motive for such a thing that is in conflict with many concepts and facts of animal behavior. That motive, my friends, is religion, which here is Islam. Of course, saying there is a religion that did not affect social and intellectual advancements in a bad way would be denying the obvious. All religions require complete dedication, and whatever this dedication would be associated with, it is bound to create problems with free will. Without free will, there is only limited motive to explore and learn. So, as the least socially and intellectually advanced society among all religious societies, we cannot say that Islam is any better or worse than any other religion generally, however, we can say that by its nature, it is the one that is applicable to active oppression the most.
There is a common response among Muslims against things they cannot logically accept: “this is not real Islam.” For example, if a 80-year-old guy marries(!) a 13-year-old girl and has sex with him, an average Turkish Muslim (conservative regardless of religion, very protective of his/her beliefs, but not practicing) would say: “it is not real Islam,” however, it actually is. While by simple logic, this is rape at its naturally disgusting form, the Quran states that such an act is “legit.” In fact, the Muslim prophet, Mohammed himself is given as an example marrying a 9-year-old girl** at his forties. For another example, when a women does not wear a headscarf, a slightly more religious person would say: “it is not real Islam,” again, however, it actually might be. The Quran does not include any verses directly requiring women to cover their hair “completely”. There are some parts reminding them to fix their headscarves to cover their neck areas, which automatically assumes they already had headscarves (which they had, according to historical data). So, in the Quran, Islam (or Allah?) does not say “wear a headscarf”, it simply says “cover your breasts.” Hadith sources are also pretty vague about the subject, so, I will not even go into that. In short, everyone is saying “this is not real Islam” for the things they do not personally approve according to their consciousness or logic. They mostly do this about the things that are actually in Islam itself. So, even in Islam or not, who is going to decide what real Islam is? If you are saying that marrying 13-year-old is against Islam, your are wrong. It is not, and this fact is supported by many verses in the Quran, and many hadiths considered to be “sahih”**. So, by not approving such an act, you would be opposing your own religion. If you are a Muslim, you are required to abide by all laws and rules stated by the religion. You cannot take what you like and abandon others. You should do all the required work, and you should accept all the stated orders and instructions. On the other hand, Allah can never be wrong (if you believe in him, of course; or, something that does not exist cannot be right or wrong). With the above assumption of a god, the God, gods, or Gods, and the common definition among Muslims, Allah (basically “the God” in Arabic) must be right at all costs and occasions. If you think having sex with a 13-year-old child is wrong, you automatically think that a part in the Quran is wrong. So, if something claimed to be the word of the God is even partly wrong, either it is not the word of the God; or the God -at least the god you believe in – does not exist. So, if you believe in Islam, you are not allowed to not like the fact that grandpas rape little children in the name of religion (marriage is sacred, yay!), or you are not allowed to refrain from killing people just because they do not believe what you had mutually believed anymore. Islam just does not work that way. By the way, even with a few examples, I hope you are starting to see what is wrong with the system that requires or allows such things, and what is not just about the people misunderstanding things. So, basically, as I mentioned above, people are denying the certain facts, details and duties that come with their religion just to protect their religion’s image, which is kind of a blasphemy, and just as meaningless as the religion itself.
Again, we see some people trying to take credit for natural events or scientific improvements. Just this morning, a follower sent me an article that claims that Said Nursi (a sheikh claimed to be a saint by a religious cult in Turkey) wrote about the Higgs particle much before it was even thought of by the scientific world. Media organizations associated with or related to the same “cult”(some prefer to call it a “society”) also recently published some news stories claiming that Fethullah Gülen*** wrote down a piece of prayer, distributed it among his followers to be hung on doors and trees, therefore Pennsylvania was not affected by the Hurricane Sandy! By the way, according to Islam, claiming that a certain act/prayer/etc. will bring a certain outcome, or saying that something like this has occurred is basically deciding in the name of Allah, which kicks you into right in the middle of hell! Late Turkish writer Aziz Nesin once said what needed to be said about claims and things just like in the first example: “Some scientist discovers or invents something, then a guy comes up and claims credit like ‘this is totally written in the Quran’. If it was written there, why is it always the so-called ‘infidels’ who contribute to science? If it was written there all along, and clear, how come we could not find it before that guy, are we just stupid?”
I could not agree more. Let us, for a moment assume that all scientific advancements, findings and information was in the Quran all along (which is definitely not true, having read it about 30 times in three different languages… but just assume…). Then we have hundreds of millions of people who believe in the Quran, and at least as many people who do not. It is really a great success showing no significant progress in the history of science with such a useful and truly guiding source of knowledge, in about one thousand and four hundred years, while the ones without this great source are now jumping from the stratosphere just for fun, curing many diseases, contributing anything they could to humanity. Yes, great success achieving that! Of course there are exceptions nowadays, because of the whole “communication era” thing. I do not see a way that a completely devoted Muslim, believing and practicing all details of Islam could be a scientist, and I kind of proved a part of this argument in this article****. Anyway, today, anyone knowingly or unknowingly by-passing the limitations of Islam can be a real scientist. So, I am just speaking on average and as a whole, not throwing the whole Muslim world away. However, if we look into the past, the great scientists Muslims are proud of do not seem that great. Yes, they each contributed great deals of advancement to the scientific society, but they are so few (stop any Muslim guy on the street, if he knows more than three Muslim scientists, I will buy you lunch) and their counterparts are so crowded, and even more successful in many ways… This is “legit” talk here, just do a little research and see how Muslim scientists are “not even exceptions”. On the other hand, a great deal of the remaining scientists are atheists or agnostics; the remaining ones are mostly non-practicing Christians because of the western domination in everything. And I assure you, if a practicing and devoted religious person is successful at science, it is probably because he/she has not worked in a project that challenges his/her beliefs. Yet… Completely ignoring the systems and connecting every problem to human error is meaningless. (but God created us, and already knows what we will do, he also decides whether we think of doing something or not, and punishes us if we have dirty thoughts, because we have free will, that is why we are by birth condemned for the sins we have nothing to do with. Additionally, did Jesus not die for our sins? Why are we still paying for them… ) Completely ignoring the system, with these circumstances in the world, requires the assumption that all Muslims have been being born as stupid, and all other people were superhero-cool. This is not realistic, and yet impossible by the rules of evolution (a priori), at least statistically so improbable that, we will be able to invent a time machine and see it for ourselves before such an argument is even seriously discussed.
If we go back to the self-approval issue, a single example would be enough:
Suppose I take a piece of paper, and wrote “I am the God” on it. I gave it to you, and said, “I am the God”. You wanted me to persuade you. I said “It is written on the paper.” You asked: “Why should it be true?”. I said: “Because it is the God’s word.”
This is not so confusing. Anyone with an IQ over 20 can understand that it is complete BS, and in no way applicable to any kind of reasoning and logic. As much as religious people do not like it, nor do they accept it, more or less all religions work with the same logic(!). But if it is so simple, why do people continue to practice a religious life? My only argument would be: some things are too simple for people to understand. Believing would be harder if not almost whole of any average society is religious. But thinking that they are part of something bigger than themselves, also along with many people (because you know, however many the people are, the truer it gets), they think their religion is much more complex than the picture of a napkin I put above, or the example I just gave. Because everyone thinks they are at least as smart as an average person, and their lives are at least as important as an average person. Even the most idiotic and/or unimportant person would not accept both. It is in our nature (that the God gave us?) to feel the need to rise in a society, so, we will need to deny at least one of the facts that we are unimportant, or stupid. No pointing fingers here. If I wanted to say that religious people are stupid, I would say so. But religion is one of the many things we tend to cling on just to feel better. If you are a smart person, you can feel smarter when you believe there are things you understand, but some others do not.
I just do not feel comfortable with the idea that I should just accept something just because I was brought up that way. Because if an extremist Muslim had been “accidentally” brought up in a city where almost everyone is Catholic, they he would just support the same logic with different words. I cannot and should not accept anything without any proof other than the thing itself. Definitions are not proofs. If I say I am God, then tell you that you should believe me, because these are the words of God, you would laugh at me. I encourage you to evaluate, investigate what you took for granted so far. Please also know that, according to a vast amount of research, most of the atheists or agnostics who used to believe left their way of life by actually learning about their religion. Read, and learn. I do not say “convert”, but know what you are talking about.
Cheers!
Yusuf S.
*: Having the reserves of a needed material by chance and gaining large amounts of money without the need for economic strategical-planning is not considered being economically advanced here. Examples would be some oil-rich Arabic countries. But the main point is, they could have done much better with their economies if they were scientifically advanced. As an economist, I promise I will explain this in the near future with another article particularly on this. For now, a better example would be Norway.
**: The age part is only vaguely implied in the Quran. The reference point of this claim is some hadiths (words of the prophet) carried up to our day. On the other hand, these hadiths are taken from a source (Buhari) that is considered “sahih” (authentic) by many scientists involved with scientific studies about religion. So, if we are going to take the Quran as the one and only source of Islam, we can say that this example about the Prophet Mohammed is only implied. We know that he married Aisha when he was in his forties and when Aisha was very young. But we do not know that she was actually 9 years old. On the other hand, many Muslims do not take the Quran as the one and only reference. They believe hadiths (if they are examined and found authentic) are their prophet’s words, and religion cannot be hold separate from these things. So, if we take the hadiths as reference (most of them “sahih”), there are two different interpretations: Mohammed married Aisha when she was 6, but did not treat her as his wife (did not have sexual relations with her) until she was 9. The other one is that he married her when she was 9, but did not treat her as his wife until she was 12. The second one is widely accepted by Muslims who do not want to make their religion seem more sexually violent (of course, it is rape when you have sex with a 9-year-old, but not when you have sex with a 12-year-old. Why? Because fuck logic). However, the first one is much more common in different sources of hadiths, again most of them considered “sahih”. So, if any one of them is true, the probability of the first one being true is significantly higher. For a completely different approach, some non-academics claim that Arabs used to count women’s ages after they become teens, therefore Aisha was 21 or 24 when she married Mohammed. This is complete bullshit, and is not worth explaining or trying to understand, as it is proven to be made up by some Muslims who have no qualifications to talk about the subject.
***: Fethullah Gülen is often referred to as “Fethullah Gülen Hocaefendi Hazretleri” by his followers. The equivalent of the title in English would be something like “The Holy Superstar-Highpriest Captain McAwesomeville”. But about the news article issue I mentioned above, I will prefer to call him The Last Airbender for a while.
****: The article is in Turkish, and titled “Why Should We Fire Scientists Who Do not ‘Believe’ in Evolution? (when roughly translated)” You can use Google Translate to read it. I do not have much time for translation, but I WILL translate it if there are too many requests. Anything for my readers!
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