Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World's Fastest-Growing Faith

by Robert Spencer

  We saw in chapter one how the rationalist Mu'tazilite sect rose and fell in medieval Islam. The demise both of philosophy and of Mu'tazilism (and other rationalist movements such as the Ash'arites) was only part of this larger trend. Bodansky outlines what the Iranian scholar Ferey- doun Hoveyda calls the "anti-intellectual rage" that swept through Islam during the Middle Ages. Clearly the impetus for such a reaction came from the Qur'an and Islamic tradition, or it wouldn't have been so strong or long lasting.

  "The Koran contains all the truth required in order to guide the believer in this world and open for him the gates of Paradise," argued the new religious elite-a principle still guiding today's Islamists. By the time this anti-intellectual movement was well established in the twelfth century, the Muslim world had committed what Hoveyda calls "civilizational suicide": incited and excited by the lure of brute force, the community of believers willingly agreed to abandon and deny its own cultural and scientific achievements and commit itself to a process of self-destruction that still unfolds.

  That self-destruction is not metaphorical:

  Aspiring to power, new generations of extremist and militant forces have repeatedly demonstrated their supremacy by ordering the destruction of cultural treasures of previous generations. For example, in 1192 the ulamathe religious leadership-in Cordova, Spain, publicly burned the books of the main scientific-medical library, including a rare study of astronomy, because these books were a "horrible calamity" to Islam.51

  In modern Iran this contempt for culture has taken the form of a bizarre popular recasting of the nation's pre-Islamic history. In the 1920s, Shah Reza Khan's attempts to restore Persian national pride met only bewilderment and anger. Amir Taheri explains:

  Most Iranians had all but forgotten their pre-Islamic past.... Persepolis, whose majestic ruins dominated the plain of Morghab near Shiraz, was not recognizable to the average Iranian as the once glorious capital of the Achaemenean empire. It was called Takht-e-Jamshid (Jamshid's Throne) and believed to be a relic of a mythological past. The tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae was believed to be the resting place of King Solomon's mother. Outside the small Zoroastrian community all ancient Persian names had been replaced by Arab Islamic ones."58

  Rather than evoke pride, this past greatness inspired contempt, as the creation of infidel predecessors.

  After centuries of this kind of thinking, Islamic philosophy, once a brilliant testimony to the dynamic force of the religion and a vital contribution to world thought, is in the popular mind but a distant memory. Now it is the province of a few academics-and of types such as the "two turbaned, sunburnt medicine men" whom V. S. Naipaul encountered in a bazaar in Iran. They offered him folk remedies with illustrious pedigrees: they were developed, said the hawkers, by "Avicenna, Galen, and `Hippocrat."' Naipaul was amazed: Avicenna! "In this dusty pavement medical stock," he writes, "was a reminder of the Arab glory of a thousand years before, when the Arab faith mingled with Persia, India, and the remnant of the classical world it had overrun, and Muslim civilization was the central civilization of the West."59

  It is indicative of the present state of affairs that after this episode, in all his other travels through the House of Islam, Naipaul rarely encountered Avicenna again.

  Is Allah's Hand Chained?

  There is a strange and telling passage in the Qur'an that is emblematic of how Muslims came to view philosophy, with its reliance on human reason instead of the great truths revealed to Muhammad-and, indeed, all knowledge derived from unaided reason: "The Jews say: `God's hand is chained.' May their own hands be chained! May they be cursed for what they say! By no means. His hands are both outstretched: He bestows as He will" (Sura 5:64).

  "God's hand is chained"!

  Scholars have wondered for fourteen centuries what Muhammad might have heard Jews saying to make him think they believed that God was bound by any laws. But that is how Muslims have regarded the Jewish and Christian concept of a rational, knowable universe, and the natural philosophy built on that belief

  Jews and Christians believe that God created the universe to operate according to reliable, observable laws. While he can suspend those laws, ordinarily he does not do so; he is not bound, but freely chooses to uphold the laws that he created. This way of thinking provided a foundation for the edifice of modern science: Christian mathematicians and astronomers knew their investigations would lead to knowledge of truth, because they believed that God had established the universe according to laws that could be ascertained. 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.60

  This is simply saying that God has established a rational, orderly universe in which the law of noncontradiction prevails.

  But to the Muslim who found all knowledge in the Qur'an and suspected philosophers of infidelity, that was tantamount to saying, "God's hand is chained." Allah, they argued, could not be thus restricted. He was free to act as whimsically as he pleased. If one could not rely on the universe to obey observable laws, and if reliable knowledge was found only in the revelation, science could not flourish.

  Stanley Jaki, a Catholic priest and a physicist, attributes contemporary Muslim unrest to this turning away from reason and natural law. He says, "What is occurring in the Muslim world today is a confrontation, not between God and the devil, identified with capitalism or Communism, but between a very specific God and science which is a very specific antagonist of that god, the Allah of the Koran, in whom the will wholly dominates the intellect." Jaki explains that it was al-Ghazali, among others, who "denounced natural laws, the very objective of science, as a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah."" He adds that "Muslim mystics decried the notion of scientific law (as formulated by Aristotle) as blasphemous and irrational, depriving as it does the Creator of his freedom."62

  Relatively early in its history, then, much of the House of Islam determined that Allah's hand would not be chained. Philosophy and science came to be widely seen as essentially worthless endeavors that only confuse man and distract him from the Qur'an.

  The decline of Islamic culture began when orthodox Muslims consolidated their victory over those who would learn from non-Muslims, and those who would pursue knowledge by the light of reason. Henceforth, Muslim divines would teach that believers should heed only the revealed law of Allah, and would strictly subordinate science and philosophy to the lineaments of divine revelation as they saw it. The consequences have been far-reaching. Jaki details just a few of them:

  More than two hundred years after the construction of the famed Blue Mosque, W. Eton, for many years a resident in Turkey and Russia, found that Turkish architects still could not calculate the lateral pressures of curves. Nor could they understand why the catenary curve, so useful in building ships, could also be useful in drawing blueprints for cupolas. The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent may be memorable for its wealth of gorgeously illustrated manuscripts and princely paraphernalia, but for no items worth mentioning from the viewpoint of science and technology. At the Battle of Lepanto the Turkish navy lacked improvements long in use on French and Italian vessels. Two hundred years later, Turkish artillery was primitive by Western standards. Worse, while in Western Europe the dangers of the use of lead had for some time been clearly realized, lead was still a heavy ingredient in kitchenware used in Turkish lands.63

  Seeds of Resentment

  In the face of increasing Western prosperity, the Muslim ambivalence toward intellectual endeavor and the non-Muslim world threatens to become explosive. The Palestinian scholars Hisham Sharabi and Mukhtar Ani ask pointedly: "W
hy has Arab society failed to modernize? Why have Arab countries failed to cope with some of the most basic social tasks?" They call for sweeping social change, according to David Pryce-Jones, but do not specify "what practical steps, what modalities, they have in mind for implementing this drastic prescription."64

  What steps can they realistically suggest? If a significant party of Muslims believe that science and modernity are somehow in their very nature un-Islamic, any attempts at large-scale reform will run into a brick wall. For there will always be a vocal and militant group demanding that the faith be implemented in its purity-whatever the cost.

  Even so, Stanley Jaki remains optimistic: "Today the impossibility of making ends meet without science forces the Muslim world to reconsider its notion of Allah. It is an agonizing process, which, in spite of the bloodshed, may, in the long run, bring a more rational mentality to troubled parts of the world." 65

  Can Islam possibly "reconsider its notion of Allah"? It won't be easy, for that notion comes straight from the perfect Word of Allah, universally and eternally valid.

  Yet at the same time, the technological superiority and cultural hegemony of the West make it an object of envy: Islamic civilization is supposed to be superior to that of unbelievers, but at this stage of human history it clearly isn't. As we have noted earlier, even radical Muslims regard Western society with ambivalence.66 In Islam, says Naipaul,

  The West, or the universal civilization it leads, is emotionally rejected. It undermines; it threatens. But at the same time it is needed, for its machines, goods, medicines, warplanes, the remittances from the emigrants, the hospitals that might have a cure for calcium deficiency, the universities that will provide master's degrees in mass media. All the rejection of the West is contained within the assumption that there will always exist out there a living, creative civilization, oddly neutral, open to all to appeal to. Rejection, therefore, is not absolute rejection. It is also, for the community as a whole, a way of ceasing to strive intellectually. It is to be parasitic; parasitism is one of the unacknowledged fruits of fundamentalism.'

  But will the parasite kill the host?

  From such resentment and envy arises Osama bin Laden, who may not be able to build something like the World Trade Center, but he can sure knock it down. If the West's technological superiority can't be matched, it can at least be assaulted. Osama respected technology enough to teach his followers how to wreak destruction on a grand scale, but not enough to sponsor large-scale educational efforts in Islamic countries. In a sense, then, the terrorist attacks of September ii are a new round, in a new and especially virulent form, of the struggle between strict Islamic orthodoxy and human reason. The problem the West faces is that unless and until Islamic orthodoxy is radically redefined (with the overwhelming agreement of the umma), it will not finally call off the struggle.

  The Crusades:

  Christian and Muslim

  "THIS CRUSADE, THIS WAR ON TERRORISM, is going to take a while," said George W. Bush on September 16, 2001.

  Crusade!

  There he went again: exposing the same old imperialist West, still bent on dominating Islam just as in the Middle Ages. When the President of the United States used the C-word, Osama bin Laden saw his opening. In a fax sent the following week to the al-Jazeera news network of Qatar, he denounced "the new Jewish and Christian crusader campaign that is led by the Chief Crusader Bush under the banner of the cross."i

  Absurd as this was, bin Laden was not alone in thinking thus. The Taliban's Mullah Muhammad Omar gleefully remarked, "President Bush has told the truth that this is a crusade against Islam."2 Other Muslims were similarly affronted. Najeh Bkeirat, an official at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, huffed: "Bush is using an ancient savage slogan. His statement reflects his limited cultural knowledge. Bush is making enemies, not only among Islamic activists, but also among ordinary Muslims and Christians alike."3 It seemed that everyone, not just Muslims, was offended. The White House issued a hasty retraction and never again dared use the word.

  But the Crusades are ancient history, aren't they? What bearing could they possibly have on today's political situation?

  Pundits across the Western world hastened to explain that in the House of Islam, memories are long. A grievance like the Crusades still burns in the collective Muslim consciousness. No less a figure than former President Bill Clinton observed that Muslims seethe over the Crusades even today:

  Indeed, in the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it, and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple mound [sic]. The contemporaneous descriptions of the event describe soldiers walking on the Temple mound, a holy place to Christians, with blood running up to their knees. I can tell you that that story is still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.4

  East and West, Muslim and Christian, secular and religious-commentators were united about the Crusades: they were an illegitimate land grab, an imperialist war against the indigenous population of the Holy Land, and an affront to the basic human right to religious freedom.

  Almost no one stood up to defend the Crusades, and to be sure, in some ways they can't be defended. Bill Clinton's lurid description of the First Crusade has some truth to it. Undeniably there were abuses and atrocities. And in fact, the West has questioned the Crusades-something probably not possible if the shoe were on the Islamic foot-almost since they were launched. Virtually all Westerners have learned to apologize for the Crusades. Less noted is the fact that these campaigns have an Islamic counterpart for which no one is apologizing and of which few are even aware.

  Over a hundred years ago, Mark Twain voiced common Western assumptions in Tom Sawyer Abroad, when he had Tom explain to Huck Finn that he wants to go to the Holy Land to liberate it from the Muslims.

  "How," Huck asks, "did we come to let them git bolt of it?"

  "We didn't come to let them git hold of it," Tom explains. "They always had it."

  "Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"

  "Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"5

  But was Tom Sawyer right?

  The Christian Middle East

  Islam originated in Arabia in the seventh century. At that time Egypt, Libya and all of North Africa were Christian and had been so for hundreds of years. So were Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Asia Minor. The churches that St. Paul addressed in his letters collected in the New Testament are located in Asia Minor (now Turkey) as well as Greece. North of Greece, in a buffer zone between Eastern and Western Europe, were lands that would become the Christian domains of the Slavs.

  Antioch and Constantinople (Istanbul), in modern Turkey, and Alexandria, in modern Egypt, were three of the most important Christian centers of the first millennium. The theological schools of Antioch and Alexandria vied for influence in the Church at large, and Christian teachings about the Person and natures of Jesus Christ were hammered out between them at the great ecumenical councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). (Both Ephesus and Chalcedon are now in Turkey.) The latter council was held at Chalcedon, right across the Bosporus from Constantinople, for the convenience of the Eastern Roman Emperor, whose seat was in Constantinople and who was deeply interested in the proceedings.

  Virtually all of the great early Fathers of the Church hailed from these areas. St. John Chrysostom, whose liturgy is still celebrated by the Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches, was from Antioch. When news of his eloquence and holiness spread far and wide, he was compelled to become archbishop of Constantinople, the imperial city. St. Athanasius, the main force behind the Nicene Creed, which virtually all Christians-Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant-still profess, was archbishop of Alexandria. St. Augustine, author of two of the foundation stones of Western civilization, the Confessions and the City of God, was a North African.

  There were also St. Basil the Great, St. Mary of Egypt, St. Anthony the Great, St. Cyril of Jerusalem-the list
goes on and on. Western Christians, if they are aware of Eastern Christianity at all, tend to think of it as an exotic outpost, but in the first five centuries of Christianity, the East led the way in both the growth of the Church and her theological development. Nor were those great saints minorities in a pagan world. These were Christian lands.

  Where Did the Christians Go?

  Yes, say the textbooks, these were Christian centers, and great ones, too. But then Muhammad and his Muslim armies arose out of the desert, and these lands became Muslim. Some historians say that the inhabitants of the lands conquered by the early Muslims were happy to be free of their corrupt Byzantine rulers, and welcomed the invaders.

  Nonetheless, it is undeniable that Muslims won these lands by conquest and, in obedience to the words of the Qur'an and the Prophet, put to the sword the infidels therein who refused to submit to the new Islamic regime. Those who escaped this fate lived in humiliating second-class status. Conversion to Islam became the only way to have a decent life. Not surprisingly, the Christian populations of these areas steadily diminished.

  How did it happen? One of the few historians who is telling this story today is Bat Ye'or, an Egyptian who now resides in Europe. In her eye-opening book The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, she recounts facts that both the West and the Muslim world would prefer to sweep under the rug. For instance:

  Sophronius [Bishop of Jerusalem], in his sermon on the Day of Epiphany 636, bewailed the destruction of churches and monasteries, the sacked towns, the fields laid waste, the villages burned down by the nomads who were overrunning the country. In a letter the same year to Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, he mentions the ravages wrought by the Arabs. Thousands of people perished in 639, victims of the famine and plague that resulted from these destructions.6