A great post from Robert Spencer writing at Frontpage Magazine:
Malaysian Mufti Denounces Intellect and Logic
The Malay Mail Online reported Tuesday that the Perak mufti, Tan Sri Harussani Zakaria, advised Muslim members of the government “not to go overboard.” He reminded them that “Islam is based on faith… Don’t make any remarks based on the intellect or logic…” Why not? Because “the intellect is governed by desires and it is influence by shaitan (satan). Don’t be ruled by desires and rudderless comments.” Harussani was reflecting an aspect of Islam that runs through its history, but is little remarked upon today by Western analysts: its anti-intellectualism and rejection of reason.
An apocryphal story about the caliph Umar sums up an attitude that has always been prevalent in the Islamic world: Umar, after conquering Egypt, is said to have ordered the burning of the fabled Library of Alexandria. When asked why, he responded: “If the books in it agree with the Qur’an, they are superfluous. If they disagree with the Qur’an, they are heretical.” Only one book was needed – and even if this story isn’t historically accurate, it reflects an anti-intellectualism that has run through Islamic history and persists today.
Robert continues with this:
As St. Thomas Aquinas explained: “Since the principles of certain sciences—of logic, geometry, and arithmetic, for instance — are derived exclusively from the formal principals of things, upon which their essence depends, it follows that God cannot make the contraries of these principles; He cannot make the genus not to be predicable of the species, nor lines drawn from a circle’s center to its circumference not to be equal, nor the three angles of a rectilinear triangle not to be equal to two right angles” (emphasis added).
This proposition of divine consistency was key for the development of scientific inquiry. “The rise of science,” observes social scientist Rodney Stark, “was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork. Because God is perfect, that handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover those principles.” That process of discovery became the foundation of modern science. “These were the crucial ideas,” says Stark, “that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.”
Indeed, for an Islamic culture to have affirmed that God’s creation operates according to immutable principles would have been nothing short of blasphemy. Allah’s hand is not fettered by consistency or by anything else. Allah is absolutely free to do anything he wills to do, without any expectations or limitations deriving from logic, love, or anything else. This idea made sure that scientific exploration in the Islamic world would be stillborn.
I have had the great pleasure to know some wonderful Muslims - my first wife was a Sufi. The people currently occupying the political stage in the middle east, those people who have declared war on the West, are pathetic losers. They are barbarians whose only means of support is through the largess of the oil ticks. Their leadership is condemning their own citizens to a meager and painful existence when they could be flourishing, prosperous and happy.
We Christians had our own dark ages lasting about 400 years but we had our reformation in the 1500's.
Islam's dark ages have been going on for over 1,000 years with no reformation in sight. In fact, it is getting worse.
Pity - there is so much potential being wasted...
Case in point: Dad lets daughter die, rather than be touched by 'strange' rescuer
Go and read. Barbaric.
