Prime Minister BoJo It Is.

[Tamas]

Which reminds me, one of the unfortunate side effects of the tribal politics, is that the more radical Islamic religious elements in Western societies -on account of being Enemy #1 status with the Right- get an almost free pass from progressive circles.

[garbon]

Which reminds me, one of the unfortunate side effects of the tribal politics, is that the more radical Islamic religious elements in Western societies -on account of being Enemy #1 status with the Right- get an almost free pass from progressive circles.

Well that is certainly the narrative that the right often promotes.

[Berkut]

Which reminds me, one of the unfortunate side effects of the tribal politics, is that the more radical Islamic religious elements in Western societies -on account of being Enemy #1 status with the Right- get an almost free pass from progressive circles.

Well that is certainly the narrative that the right often promotes.

Its a narrative that is pretty obvious even to those not on the right.

It's kind of funny. The right uses it as a fig leaf to cover their racism and xenophobia, and the left uses the right using it to pretend it doesn't exist at all.

It's like they really need one another...

[Razgovory]

I have no idea why countries in the Muslim sphere didn't keep pace with Europe.  I also don't know why the Chinese and the Indian spheres failed either.

[Tamas]

I have no idea why countries in the Muslim sphere didn't keep pace with Europe.  I also don't know why the Chinese and the Indian spheres failed either.

Years ago I remember an Economist briefing where they tried to look for the reasons for the Arab Spring and they painted a bleak picture. Not only overpopulation, but a staggering lack of signs of what I'd call healthy/cutlured societies. One thing I remember is the number of books published throughout the Arab world which was basically non-existant compared to Europe.

[Berkut]

I don't get it: the Guardian was trying to steer up a scandal over a 2007 BoJo article where he accused Islam of holding back the Muslim world for centuries, and what an "outrage" this generated.

Surely the guy is terrible enough without trying to crucify him for opinions that might be offending sensibilities but otherwise quite clearly supported by history and reality?

Except they aren't.
The reasons for Europe surpassing the Islamic world have nothing to do with religion

Islamic fundamentalists and their values were absolutely instrumental in ending the golden age of Arab science. I mean yes the Mongols invaded and that was certainly bad but the entire Muslim world was not taken over by the Mongols and in any case that era had already passed by at that point. And they were empowered by the lack of separation of religion and state in the Islamic world. I don't see on what basis one could claim that would have happened otherwise but I am interested to here more substance to your claim here.

Do you not think conservative politically charged religion being the dominant force in society does not have a regressive impact? I guess I never pictured you are this big proponent of religion.

What I find really intriguing about this is that the same people doing the faux shrug "Gosh we have no idea why the Islamic world did not progress, but surely it could not have been religion!!!!" will be the very first to insist that Christians not be allowed to push Creationism as science, or ensconce the Ten Commandments as foundational principles of law, or any number of other clearly and obviously terrible Christian ideas of jamming religious dogma into the secular world.

They would, rightly, make the very reasonable argument that pushing creationism as science is in fact *detrimental* to science. Demanding that the earth be recognized as 6000 years old isn't just wrong, it would actually be stifling to scientific thought to insist that it be taught as actual science.

Of course holding up myth as fact is detrimental to human advancement, and noting that a large part of the world went into a phase where they did precisely that as a matter of secular, political, scientific, and economic policy...well, if we removed the specific terms from it, and just generically described it without reference to "Islam", these same people would not disagree with the notion that such a world would in fact be unlikely to be able to compete with those that did not do such a thing, at least not to the same extent.

[Oexmelin]

The problem with these brisk narratives, is the very plastic chronology used to make one's point. When is secularism taking hold in the West, exactly? When is the hold of the West over the rest of the world attributable to that secularism, rather than the industrial revolution, or colonialism? How do we reconcile that with the counter example of China?

[Berkut]

The problem with these brisk narratives, is the very plastic chronology used to make one's point. When is secularism taking hold in the West, exactly? When is the hold of the West over the rest of the world attributable to that secularism, rather than the industrial revolution, or colonialism? How do we reconcile that with the counter example of China?

THere is nothing plastic about it.

Just because there are examples of other societies that failed to compete for other reasons doesn't discount from the argument that an overwhelming primacy placed on religious doctrine as fact it stifling to growth.

YOur argument is like someone saying "The Red Sox didn't make it to the World Series because they had terrible pitching" and someone else saying "HAH! That cannot be true, because the Mets didn't make the World Series either, and they had good pitching!".

Since the original argument is not that the only reason any society doesn't compete is a stifling theocracy, pointing out that non-stifling theocracies may not compete well for other reasons doesn't address it...

And of course, looking at the "hold of the West" is being a bit narrow in any case. Does the lack of noble science prizes attributable to Muslim scientists because of the "hold of the West"? Does the incredible lack of literacy in Islamic countries the result of the "hold of the West"?

UNICEF notes that out of 24 nations with less than 60% female primary enrollment rates, 17 were Islamic nations; more than half the adult population is illiterate in several Islamic countries, and the proportion reaches 70% among Muslim women.[57] UNESCO estimates that the literacy rate among adult women was about 50% or less in a number of Muslim-majority countries, including Morocco, Yemen, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Niger, Mali, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Chad.[58] Egypt had a women literacy rate of 64% in 2010, Iraq of 71% and Indonesia of 90%.[58] While literacy has been improving in Saudi Arabia since the 1970s, the overall female literacy rate in 2005 was 50%, compared to male literacy of 72%.[59]

Would anyone argue that female literacy has no positive effect on culture, advancement, or the ability to compete? Literacy rates in Europe exploded around 1600-1800, as a direct result of the Enlightenment - and this was for both men and women. There was no such explosion of literacy in the Islamic Middle East among women. Indeed, literacy in much of the Islamic world was still below 40% as late as WW2 (It has since exploded, which of course is really a great thing). But even among women, today, literacy in fundamentalist Islamic society is comparatively appalling. Should we actually argue that this does NOT have a negative effect on societies ability to advance, compete, thrive? Or should we argue that islamic societies lack of female literacy (at least historically) was not a function of their religious beliefs about the role of women in the family and society?

You can come up with a bunch of different data points.

But even that isn't REALLY the point. The point I find incredible is this:

If I said, generically, "Fundamentalist religious societies are going to have a much more difficult time competing with non-fundamentalists societies in many realms, but especially in science" it would not be seen as even remotely controversial among anyone not a religious fundamentalist. Indeed, it seems not just obvious, but in fact a core tenet in the basic idea of the superiority of liberal secularism.

But If someone says "Fundamentalist islamic societies had a much more difficult time competing with non-religious fundamentalist societies in many realms, but especially in science" I am some kind of anti-Muslim bigot, and the SPLC will probably put me on some list.

[Grey Fox]

I don't get it: the Guardian was trying to steer up a scandal over a 2007 BoJo article where he accused Islam of holding back the Muslim world for centuries, and what an "outrage" this generated.

Surely the guy is terrible enough without trying to crucify him for opinions that might be offending sensibilities but otherwise quite clearly supported by history and reality?

Except they aren't.
The reasons for Europe surpassing the Islamic world have nothing to do with religion

Islamic fundamentalists and their values were absolutely instrumental in ending the golden age of Arab science. I mean yes the Mongols invaded and that was certainly bad but the entire Muslim world was not taken over by the Mongols and in any case that era had already passed by at that point. And they were empowered by the lack of separation of religion and state in the Islamic world. I don't see on what basis one could claim that would have happened otherwise but I am interested to here more substance to your claim here.

Do you not think conservative politically charged religion being the dominant force in society does not have a regressive impact? I guess I never pictured you are this big proponent of religion.

What I find really intriguing about this is that the same people doing the faux shrug "Gosh we have no idea why the Islamic world did not progress, but surely it could not have been religion!!!!" will be the very first to insist that Christians not be allowed to push Creationism as science, or ensconce the Ten Commandments as foundational principles of law, or any number of other clearly and obviously terrible Christian ideas of jamming religious dogma into the secular world.

They would, rightly, make the very reasonable argument that pushing creationism as science is in fact *detrimental* to science. Demanding that the earth be recognized as 6000 years old isn't just wrong, it would actually be stifling to scientific thought to insist that it be taught as actual science.

Of course holding up myth as fact is detrimental to human advancement, and noting that a large part of the world went into a phase where they did precisely that as a matter of secular, political, scientific, and economic policy...well, if we removed the specific terms from it, and just generically described it without reference to "Islam", these same people would not disagree with the notion that such a world would in fact be unlikely to be able to compete with those that did not do such a thing, at least not to the same extent.

The Anglo-Saxon world has issues with separating religiousness from ethnicity.

[Oexmelin]

THere is nothing plastic about it.

Literacy rates in Europe exploded around 1600-1800, as a direct result of the Enlightenment

[Malthus]

Perhaps the better question is not what held the Islamic world back, but what caused the European West to surge ahead - of them as well as all other societies on Earth, with their obvious competitors being the Islamic world and China (and India, Indochina, non-European Asia incorporated into the Russian empire, Japan, Korea, etc.).

It's a matter of comparative competition - what matters is not how powerful a nation or region is, but how comparatively powerful. There were a lot of factors, perhaps the most significant being that most of these other areas were dominated for long periods by unitary empires that actively stifled growth out of self-preservation, at just the wrong time - when their European rivals were surging ahead. This was certainly the case for the Ch'ing dynasty in China - as alien Manchus, they had a deep investment in conservatism and attempts to modernize were correspondingly half-hearted.

Tokugawa Japan is a ket example - they had an empire that explicitly stifled progress in the name of social stability; the putative leaders of the nation recognized this policy as fundamentally unworkable when the Americans showed up in battleships, and all the Japanese had to counter them was a handful of obsolete cannon and a bunch of Samurai; they then discarded it (leading to both progress and disaster). Religion wasn't a big factor for them, except negatively ('keep Christianity out' being a major Tokugawa goal - because it was seen as the thin edge of the European dominance wedge).

Key point here is that much of the Islamic world was for centuries dominated by a major empires - mostly Ottomans, but also Mamluks, Safavids, Moguls.

If Europe had been completely dominated throughout the period by (say) the Habsburgs and/or Bourbon dynasties, it may not have progressed as much and as quickly as it did, and the imbalance between Europe, China and the Islamic world would not have been as extreme - though Europe would still have advantages, given by geography (access to the Atlantic). How that would contrast with a China that was agressive and expansionist (with access to the Pacific) or Persia (with access to the Indian Ocean) is hard to say ...     

[The Minsky Moment]

Literacy rates in Europe exploded around 1600-1800, as a direct result of the Enlightenment - and this was for both men and women.

That causation is clearly not right, as the Enlightenment doesn't get started until well into the second century of that period.  A far better case can be made that the spread of Christian fundamentalism (i.e. Protestantism and the Counter-reformation) was a key driver of increasing literacy in the West.  In a similar way that centuries earlier Islam drove increases in literacy in the regions where it took hold.

[Malthus]

Literacy rates in Europe exploded around 1600-1800, as a direct result of the Enlightenment - and this was for both men and women.

That causation is clearly not right, as the Enlightenment doesn't get started until well into the second century of that period.  A far better case can be made that the spread of Christian fundamentalism (i.e. Protestantism and the Counter-reformation) was a key driver of increasing literacy in the West.  In a similar way that centuries earlier Islam drove increases in literacy in the regions where it took hold.

It is also perhaps worth pointing out that Christian fundamentalism may be one of the reasons why Europe became balkanized into squabbling nations ...

[The Minsky Moment]

I also don't know why the Chinese and the Indian spheres failed either.

Take the modern history of India and Pakistan.
India suffered terrible development problems throughout the 20th century.  If suffered those problems under "enlightened" British rule, and it continued to suffer those problems after independence while being governed by a staunchly secularist political movement.  India has enjoyed strong growth more recently, but much of that growth has occurred under the rule of an openly pro-fundamentalist party.

For the first 50 years of its existence, Pakistan kept pace almost exactly with India in per capita GDP.  So if there is an "Islamic discount" to development, it doesn't show in that specific comparison.

Pakistan has and does have very serious challenges to development in that it is still a significantly tribalized society with feudal rule still dominating the countryside and endemic corruption and crime problems in the cities. I believe this condition is not directly related to Islam and would hold regardless of what religion was commonly practiced. That said, it is impossible to fully disentangle religion from the broader culture in which it is embedded.

I do not question the basic proposition that Islam, like most religions, can have deleterious effects on a nation's economic and scientific development.  it's relative contribution in particular instances, however, is very hard to measure.

[The Minsky Moment]

Key point here is that much of the Islamic world was for centuries dominated by a major empires - mostly Ottomans, but also Mamluks, Safavids, Moguls.   

As an example, the Ottomans have been criticized for failing to encourage literacy and publishing across the Empire.  There were good reasons to do that that have nothing to do with Islam. There are obvious connections between mass literacy and newspapers on the one hand, and nationalist agitation, on the other.