PS: While you may disagree with this, there is a lot of research into this topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+devel...
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/31/economics-...
I have seen US and England held up as other examples, Germany may be a counter example.
PS: Bavaria is only nominally 51 Cathlic vs the average of 30 for the entire country. Further, you can break things down to a much lower level. https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/07/18/germany-mass-go...
Max Weber was a smart guy, but he died 100 years ago. I hope we have better things to correlate with prosperity than just one strain of a particular religion.
I don't think this line of research hold up very well, specially not cross country over long timeframes.
Take a look at total GDP per capita, the northeast is way ahead. Different metric, different results, still not caused by religion.
Granted, this was in the less religious parts of Turkey, but it's grossly unfair to the moderates to paint everyone with the fundamentalist brush. There's a billion Muslims out there.
The majority of Christians do not believe that the Earth was created 10000 years ago!
I strongly recommend the comic book Persepolis to anyone who wants a better understanding of life in the Middle East (or at least, Iran).
Ataturk abolished the Caliphate in 1924. He explicitly introduced the constitution to Turkey which declared the state to be secular, that is, independent of any religious influence! He effectively banned headscarves (hijabs, nijabs, whatever) in all public institutions (being religious attire, therefore to be separated from state), including schools and universities.
The West however wasn't so smart recently, forgetting how much fights and sacrifices were needed to achieve the freedoms we have now (but will we keep them depends on our readiness to stand for them, more than up to now).
Erdogan now pulls Turkey back to the pre-20th century state. And unfortunately, there are enough of those who support him and his Islamic "revival."
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The comics Persepolis that you mention, among some personal stories, also covers the moment of "Islamic revolution" in Iran, which, among many other things, destroyed women freedoms. Before:
http://www.parstimes.com/fashion/pre_revolution/
Now:
http://www.aquila-style.com/focus-points/iranian-women-campa...
Watch and weep. Or consider whom you support.
From the book Why Nations Fail. http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-why-nations-fail/chapanal...
Compared to the US, where political actions are sorely based on facts and the bible and religion are completely irrelevant. /s
It's not really an issue only in Islam, people make a lot of actions because of an even older book - the bible - as well.
I fail to see how prayer affects anyone's potential in a negative way.
I've spent more time getting to the break room at work than she has on afternoon prayer. So I fail to see the connection between the 2-3 scheduled daily prayer times and production. If that is the case, coffee, cigarettes, lunch, and bathroom breaks are equal contributors.
Ah huh.
That's not to belittle the contributions of actual Mohammedans (e.g. Avicenna, who really did do more than just repeat his Classical forebears), but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken. Like Anglo-Saxons building their mead-halls over Roman mosaics, they enjoyed the products of a higher civilisation but were unable to match them (the Umma being rather larger than the Heptarchy, they had a much bigger base from which to decline, and a correspondingly-longer period of relative comfort).
... really? many of them ? can you please write "many" more from "non Islamic extraction"
"El-Khwarizmi, who was from a Zoroastrian family and may have converted out of economic or political expediency"
...So one particular scholar is not really a "muslim", soo it must that everything else worthy must be from non-muslim people
"but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken."
...So they were just plunderers?
This is textbook western self-propaganda.
The dialog becomes impossible because of many other important reasons, too, including,
a. the opposition by liberals/leftists/Islamists to bring forward any critical review of some extremely troubling vicious aspects of Islam and Islamic scriptures (Quran and Hadiths) under the phony reasons of islamophobia
b. the reluctance of Islamists to accept the notion of freedom of expression even if it means some of the expression offends the Muslims (e.g. discussion regarding pedophilia of Muhammad or someone drawing cartoons of Muhammad)
These views by Bill Maher and Sam Harris may help understand this point in a better way. [1], [2], [3]
In fact, the freedom of opinion is under attack because of Islam, even in the free western world to a large extent.
The freedom lovers, liberals and humanists must understand this threat posed by the vicious ideology of mainstream Islam. The USA and the west now must also invest similar (if not more) efforts and resources to fight this vicious ideology as those that they invested to fight another vicious ideology called communism.
It should however be noted that there are many people who have been Muslims just by birth and they do not necessarily follow the vicious ideology to its core.
So the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E1u9lQeAsY
In conflict between group X and group Y, if you ask X it's because Y does (insert list of offenses here). The same from the opposing side. Nobody wants to acknowledge that both sides have issues, and if they work towards fixing said issues the world will be a better place.
Your whole diatribe about "liberals/leftist/Islamist" is the exact same crap that extremist on the other side preach, just projected through your (the way I view it) conservative lense.
The biggest problem is that nobody is willing to step outside of their comfort zone, to see how the other half lives, in order to move forward. That goes for both the "liberals/leftist/Islamist" left and the "conservative/anti-pc/nobody-deserves-to-be-comfortable-except-me" right
> So the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se.
If you understand what Islam is, and what a muslim is, this statement makes no sense.
If you mean to say that "Islam and Muslims are the same" I beg to differ. Islam is a religion not person and Muslims are persons.
Let me clarify, Islam is a religion/ideology whereas Muslim is a person who is either practicing Islam (religion/ideology) or who is labeled as Muslim because he/she is born within a family who practices Islam.
By "the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se", I mean the fight must against the ideology/religion and must not necessarily against all Muslim population.
So it was a big mistake by USA to attack Iraq as a reaction to the 9/11 attacks on USA, instead the military attack (only small surgical level) should have been restricted to Taliban/Osama in Afghanistan and then along with that small military surgical attack, the USA should have actually opened a war against the vicious ideology of Islam.
The Iraq was not a big threat to USA. Millions of innocent lives could have been saved in Iraq and elsewhere, if the USA had realized that this is an ideological war and must be fought on the ideological war-front. This can and must be done by supporting liberal minded humanists (like, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins) who are exposing the viciousness of the ideology of Islam and upholding the modern humanist values like freedom of expression and separation of 'mosque and state'.
Religions (for those who practice them) are ideals that are intrinsically woven into peoples lives.
So by saying you should attack Islam (with no qualifiers to that statement), you are indeed saying you should attack Muslims.
I'm not going to address the second part of your statement, other than to say that the war in Iraq was illegal, wrong, and counter-productive. It, 9/11, and US sponsored creation of the terrorist boogieman are largely the root that modern islamophobia, and on the flip side modern terrorist cells, have sprung from.
Just admit that you don't like muslims and go on about your day.
That is your way of interpreting it.
I never said we should physically attack the Muslim people. I am not against Muslim people, per se. All I am saying is we should attack the vicious ideology of Islam.
If the sentiments of some (potentially radical or not-so-radical) Muslims get hurt due to the thought attacks on the ideology of Islam, so be it. These Muslims should learn to get offended and learn to respect the freedom of expression and learn to respond to such offending expressions in more civilized manners and not by killing people.
You should be telling and encourage these Muslims to learn the fundamentals of free and open society.
If some Muslims are getting offended because some people draw cartoon of their prophet, so be it, these Muslims must learn to live peacefully in a free society even if they get offended by other people.
If some Muslims are getting offended because some people raise the issue of the pedophilia practiced by their prophet Muhammad, so be it, these Muslims must learn to live peacefully in a free society even if they get offended by other people.
The liberals/critical thinkers should not be suppressed just because expression of their thoughts in a peaceful manner hurts the sentiments of some Muslims.
The liberals/critical thinkers have attacked earlier and do attack now also the Christianity/Judaism/Hinduism and our free society never suppresses their thoughts. Islam should not be an exception and hence Islam should not be given special treatment.
Once again let me make it clear that I am not against Muslim people, in fact, I do have many Muslim friends and they are open to such thoughts.
Regardless, OP said Muslims couldn't thrive praying 5 times a day, the Islamic Golden Age (as big or as small as you think it was) still proves otherwise.
Last I checked we were discussing history..
You can take out a mortgage in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Morocco.. They were the first four I checked.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194633/Luxury-high-...
It has consequence for enormous part of a life. For example, I was traveling using metro in Dubai. I had 5 dirham on my travel card and the trip I wanted to take costs 3 dirham. I couldn't enter the train, because the maximum charge is 8 dirham, so I could have negative balance.
Furthermore, I think maximizing for "human potential" is a red herring -- the inevitable end-result is exercising control over a given population to exploit their human potential and TBH that sounds revolting. We should be given the freedom to live our lives out regardless of someone else's small and personal ambitions, including dedicating our lives to practicing Islam.
Islam is a religion, an ideology and a culture all blended into one. Parts of it are bad.
But I don't think it's any of that. I think it's something simpler: there is nothing in the desert. It's really hard to build a civilization of nothing. Absent civilization, even if there is Oil in the ground ... the surpluses won't be managed effectively or fairly.
I think that were the Arab world to be green and lush, it would be a better place, because civilization and power would have developed from an agrarian base ... which is more distributed, then higher level civic institutions can come into place etc.
With desert+oil, basic and important institutions don't get a chance to form, and you have a Fedual system which depends on the intelligence and benevolence of the Feudal Lords, aka House of Saud, Qatari 'royal' family etc.
Education curriculum, fairness, equality, social justice, civic duty, personal accountability -- all of these things are similarly as present in Islam as they are anywhere else.
Also, governance by royal decree is one of the most un-Islamic things possible. This is not lost on the Gulf monarchies so they are forced into a submissive position when confronted by the relevant Sunni Islamic authority.
The problem is which form they take. Women are clearly not men's equal in the Koran. The Koran talks about all these subjects, it doesn't mean it promotes these. According the to Koran(and the Bible) , slavery is acceptable, the Koran even tells how Muslims should treat their slaves. Is that the fairness,equality and social justice you are talking about ? Or are you twisting the meaning of these words at first place ?
You can argue the Koran is a product of its time,which it totally is. Saying that is a good way to invalidate the fact that it should be taken as "the final, perfect word of \"God\" " if it should be read in context. But it's forbidden for Muslims to criticize the Koran at first place... so back to square one.
That said, women are most definitely treated differently under Islamic rule as outlined by Islamic law, and there is no point of view that can deny this. Some would argue that women and men are inherently different and that it would be imprudent to ignore this, and this line of reasoning leads us to unpleasant situations like women being denied the same opportunities to achieve success as men are.
Millions of Muslims in the West find slavery to be barbaric and none of them own slaves, and not only that but one of the central tenets of Islam is donation to make slavery unnecessary. This is evidence of fairness, equality, and social justice not only being compatible with Islam, but encouraged.
That said, slavery is permissible in Islam under certain circumstances, and the primary basis for this permission is the profound lack of protection afforded to non-Muslims outlined in Islamic teachings. This is intentional and personally I hope it falls by the wayside.
Finally, criticism of the Quran is a touchy subject. The study of mathematics was regarded as being unable to bring perfection to the human soul, but many Muslims studied it nevertheless and humanity advanced in indescribable ways. Death was similarly regarded as an act of God regardless of the cause of death, but the study of medicine was defended as not being un-Islamic.
My friend, no, they are not, and there is not a single nation on Earth where Islam is the prevailing religion where this is the case.
Now - I'm not saying that Islam is compatible with these things, and I agree that my comments are directed towards the 'Arabic and Arabic influenced world' - and that Islam in Indonesia is obviously something altogether different - nevertheless, your comment does not hold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization," is in Iraq. Keep in mind that it is just one of many, it is nevertheless an area that is green and not an endless sandy expanse.
I'll also point out that Hammurabi was likely speaking an Afro-Asiatic language (of which Arabic is the most widely-spoken in modern times), so ancient Mesopotamia is as close to the modern Iraq ethnolinguistically as ancient Greece is to modern Western Europe.
We are going to enter a similar situation in the developed countries as the workforce will be replaced by automation. Work has been a great "distributor" of wealth, each person being in charge of his own work potential. But after automation, people will have nothing to trade for. Regular people will become like "muslims in barren countries", dependants upon the state and wealthy. And the riches will collect in the hands of big corporations who operate the robotic fleets.
The only solution I see is to open source and democratize AI and robotics so it doesn't concentrate wealth like it happened with operating systems (Microsoft), search (Google), social networks (FB) and oil (arab countries). People need to be independent from now on. If corporations are to function without hiring people, then people need to function without needing said corporations. We need to focus on agriculture, 3D printing, solar and open source AI. We need to be self sufficient.
We also used to say statistics is what people should study (in the early 1970s? iirc). Not everyone has the inclination or bandwidth.
This is a problem that will only be solved by figuring out tools to help the human component.
And Unfortunately any tool created has immense scope of being misused. The power no man should have.
For example, a tool which can identify the intent of a speaker online by studying the sum total of all conversations they have ever had, would be vastly useful in in helping people build bridges with each other. IT would solve immense problems with law keeping, justice, and even mundane things like moderation on a forum.
At the same time knowing intent would be the scariest thing to see abused by an unscrupulous third party.
When faced with impending death, pessimists might commit suicide. Optimists might struggle on. People with under-developed personalities might just listen to the first person they run into.
But whatever the case, their choices will be broadcast through their religious and cultural values. Those committing suicide could self-terminate. Or they could be suicide bombers. Those deciding to carry on could become artists or prophets. Or they might open a house of worship.
In addition, the definition of "impending doom" changes depending on your philosophy of life and worldview.
It's a red herring to blame everything on religion. People are people. But it's also a red herring to refuse to accept the role of religion in determining how well cultures thrive. Whatever myths you choose to believe in has a profound impact on how you see the world around you and how you react to it.
Culture shock happens and when it happens on a massive scale then there will obviously be issues, and I think that is what we are witnessing now. It may take a generation but I am hopeful that Western society will co-exist with Islam peacefully, regardless of the negative interpretations some people have.
You could do the same with a billion and a half people anywhere -- give them a unifying identity, tell them to live in every nation on Earth, and make most of the poor and uneducated. There will be a central global point that people call home, there will be culture clashes, and there will be demagogues taking advantage of the situation.
Yes, there's a huge culture shock happening. Christianity has been quite flexible over the years. People still think that if aliens land that Christians will freak out. These are people who don't know their history. Whatever kind of weirdness comes along, somehow Christians absorb it into whatever they believe. Then they'll insist that this was what they believed all along :) To adherents, this is probably both a bug and a feature.
The jury is still out with Islam. With so many adherents, it's bound to morph into something. The pressure is certainly high. But I have no idea what the characteristics of that thing is or how much traction it will have in the community. Like I do all people, I wish them the best. Belief systems based on tribal forms of society aren't going to go far in a internet-connected world without a lot of change. Just ask the Judaism folks.
Thanks for the reply!
That said, I continue to assert that your arguments are red herrings -- attempts to indirectly answer one question with another's answer. Fixing the issues you brought up are unrelated to removing Islam's influence on the people of the world, unless you feel that Islam's binding influence on large populations is prohibitively restrictive to the point that is an impediment to any social program of any scale on Earth. If that is the case then the natural progression will lead us to war, and many nations around the world have already been lead to this conclusion.
Simply allowing them to participate in Western society is enough to sufficiently "address" those issues, as many will naturally gravitate towards more progressive and liberal lifestyles.
I have seen many Muslim women driving, walking outside, and showing their faces without incident, but I think it's important to point out that there are plenty of non-Muslim cultures that punish unmarried women for public displays of affection (including simply being present with a non-relative male).
It boils down to the simple question whether value diffusion is faster than they breed and escape possible upcoming droughts and whether there really is potential for a major cultural clash. Some people say it's obvious in one way or the other. I really don't know. I am also not convinced by anything I'm writing, I am just trying to get some confirmation or disconfirmation of these sort of ideas.
[1] http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=21
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10635510/Women-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_slavery
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_antisemitism
I am talking about the cultural difference today, not in the past, about aggression and harmful traditions occurring in reasonably stable and educated middle classes. Note, that I am not trying to whitewash the past of Christianity; both sets of beliefs are bad in that they have or had the potential to produce fundamentalism and badly informed decisions, but I am just arguing for a qualitative difference between Islam and Christianity (especially today's Christianity and Islam), i.e. one is much worse than the other. Today's Christianity does not produce anything as Islam does in other troubled regions such as African countries, even though these people would be in their 'right' to take vengeance for e.g. centuries of slavery, right?
The last sentence in my previous comment was not very clear. What I meant to say is that there are many non-Muslim African countries which have suffered from Western exploitation, yet we don't witness the kind of religiously motivated violence as in Islamic countries with comparable histories. This is an indicator for different dispositions caused by different sets of cultural memes.
The fact that when given a chance to re-envision their society and culture, revolutionaries in these countries such as the Muslim Brotherhood keep choosing Sharia and other forms of theocracy means I think they will remain in a society strangled by the yoke of fundamentalist religion for the foreseeable future.
People in the Arab world aren't patients - they are agents, and have the power to change their circumstances.
But, IMHO, what you are describing is universal. Autocrats have been taking advantage of cultural clash since time immemorial, it's just that the Middle East has been largely uneducated and weak while being led by opportunists.
Anyways, I am completely open to admitting that you are correct. Demonstrating the value of Western culture most definitely results in migration away from Islamic fundamentalism.
Also, it's easy to say that people in the Arab world are afforded agency, but what you are advocating requires people in the Arab world to be educated. The former is useless without the latter.
Saying that is ignoring the hadiths and the sharia which describe in great details all the aspects of the life of a Muslim. There is no such thing with Christianity. There are no "christian tribunals" describe by the bible. Islam is closer to Judaism in that aspect. The bible doesn't cover in great details all the aspects of life of a christian. Furthermore the new testament is clearly a new covenant incompatible in many aspects with the first one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naskh_(tafsir)
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1) but still, regretfully, threatening with the "hell" for ever and ever for the "sinners," judgement day and the stuff