Religion
How Muslim Propagators Swindle the Western Civilization: Islam and Science Expropriation (C)

Yet another perspective to reflect: what are the archaeological treasures and the glorious historical events Egypt is proud of? Are they Pharaonic or Islamic? What about the Assyrians and Chaldean sites in Iraq? Are they Babylonian or Islamic? What about the Ugarit and Sumerian sites in Syria? Are they belong to the great history of ancient Syria or the Islamic era? In Lebanon it is the Phoenician culture and in North Africa it is the Berber. What about Persia that takes high proud of its scientific cultural achievements and cherishes its Arian glorious past? Does Islam has anything to do there? What about the great achievements of Buddhist Afghanistan and Hindu India? Islam has only left ruins there and took care to perform ethnic cleansing genocide.
John O’neill’s research (Holy Warriors: Islam and the demise of Classical Civilization) prove that Islam’s cultural and scientific contribution to the world is not only poorly negligent but negative. Not only Islam did not contribute to the civilization’s advancement, but in fact Islam was the main cause to the stagnation, decay, and the obstruction of Europe in the Middle-Ages. The so-called “Islamic Golden Age” is a total myth and a fabrication. The research of Dario Fernandes-Morera (The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians and Jews under Islamic rule in Medieval Spain, proves that Spain was the uppermost victim of the Islamic imperialist-colonialist occupation, and perhaps the most violent and harsh of the Islamic rule. The Christian Crusades were in fact defensive wars that saved Europe from the Islamic aggression. They were the last frontier before the transformation of Europe to Islamic territory.
Moreover, Islam was negatively the main cause for the discovery of America. The history of Western Civilization begins in a conflict with the Orient, a conflict of which it may be the end is not yet. When the Ottoman Empire took control of the Bosporus and Egypt, new routes had to be found.When Muslim Turks cut off the land routes to India and China, Europeans began to look for sea routes. In 1492,Christopher Columbus took four voyages to the New World (1492-93; 1493-1496; 1498-1500; and 1502-1504). The incentive was the Islamic imperialist occupation.
In his book, Libro de Las Profecias, he revealed his motivation for setting sail on his first voyage in August 1492, with the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria. He sought to find a sea route to India and China as the Ottoman Empire had closed off the land routes. The Mozarabic Chronicle in 754, recorded that thousands of churches were burned and: “God alone knows the number of the slain.” Columbus referenced how 40 years earlier in 1453, the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, effectively cutting off the land trade routes to travel from Europe east to India and China.This gave rise to Columbus and other explorers searching for a sea route.Present-day critical of Columbus for discovering the New World should blame the ruthlessness of Islamic imperialism, for it was only after the Ottoman Empire cut off of the land routes to India and China that Columbus sought a sea route.
Those Arab and Muslim propagators who take so deep self-pride on the greatness of Ibn Khaldun, as the first historian, for example, should read what he said about Arab character: the natural talent of Arabs is the plundering and exploitation of others. Belongings of others inspire them to theft and robbery. They feed through their swords, robb and plunder without moral boundaries. During their conquests, they occupy a country and pay no attention to the heritage of the people. The only thing the Arabs cared for was to obtain other people’s property through extortion and blackmail. They knew no mercy for other peoples and their well being. It was never their intention to improve a community but to find new ways to satisfy their greed and increase their wealth. Because of their nature it is hard for Arabs to accept any authority. On the basis of their characteristics they show brutality, greed and rivalry. It seldom happens that they agree on anything, except on religious matters. Raiding and plundering rule the Arabs lives, the way they behave, their relationships, their views of the other, and their decisions. Any Arab conquest automatically entailed the destruction of the civilization in question as most cities were deserted by their inhabitants. Cultivated fields turned into a wasteland. The areas between Mediterranean and Sudan, which has previously built and inhabited, are now just a desert, where ruins are left to to remind us that it once was a civilization.
Definitions analyzed
“Islamic science” and /or “Arab Science.” George Saliba, the University of Columbia’s Arabic and Islamic Studies, claims that “Islamic science” virtually created the modern world. To this, Toby Huff refers to “Arab Science,” and claims that from the eighth century to the end of the fourteenth, Arabic science was probably the most advanced science in the world, greatly surpassing the West and China. Arab scientists were in the forefront of scientific advance.
When Pope Benedict XVI delivered his Regensburg Address on 12 September 2006, quoted a passage about Islam, given by Manuel IIPalaiologos, the Byzantine Emperor: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached. To this absolutely correct words Tariq Ramadan, Europe’s favorite Muslim and perhaps one of the most influential figure in the West today, condemned the Pope and Europe for ignoring the positive contributions of Islam to the development of rational thought in the West: Benedict’s narrow definition of European identity is deeply troubling and almost dangerous, the tendency of Westerners to ignore the critical role that Muslims played in the development of Western thought. In his article he gives a long list of Muslims who developed European sciences.
However, first, “Islamic Science” is not an “Arab Science.” This differentiation is important to start with. “Arabs science” was and still is until today, non-existent. One can count Arab scientists in his finger-hands. In Huff’s analysis it appears clearly: his mistake is that when he uses the term “Arab science” he actually means all Muslims, anybody who happened to live under Arab-Islamic rule, and not necessarily Arabs.Muslims, whenever they talk about Islam’s contributions to civilization, are quickly to mention Muslim philosophers and scientists, and the Islamic Golden Age, spanning from 9th to the 12th century. To understand this issue, one must address: more than inventing and developing, as they claim, Muslims transferred Greek, Indian and Persian knowledge and sciences through the Arabic language. Muslims have not created any new sciences but passed on the formers’ (‘Ulûm al-Awā’il, ancient sciences). Moreover, this project of translation to Arabic was done by the local indigenous scholars, Assyrians, Persians, Jews, Christians, and not by Arabs. In fact, only those sciences that were considered fitting to Arab-Muslim interests, like linguistics, mainly grammar (‘Ulûm al-Lughah), vocabulary (‘Ulûm an-Nahû), and historiography, were investigated. Other scientific research, mainly natural sciences, were entirely investigated by the natives of the Islamic conquests, except of very few and still without considerable progress.
The Greek-Arabic translation movement in Abbasid Baghdad, like other scholarly efforts was not centered in educational institutions, Madāris, which remained religious-oriented, but in the households of patrons seeking social prestige. The translation movement supported by the entire elite of Abbasid society, however, when these patrons changed their priorities, or when they died, the institutions often died with them.
Madāris were established under the law of Waqf, pious endowments, which meant they were legally obligated to follow the religious commitments. Autonomous institutions were utterly absent in the Islamic world until the late nineteenth century. Again, “Islamic sciences” had only one meaning: the study of the Qur’an, the principles of the Shari’ah, and Arabic grammar. Nothing more. “Islamic Sciences” is a fake myth propagated to the ignorant contemporary world without any corroboration and substantiation. Averroës’ works were forbidden and neglected, even burnt, until Europeans rediscovered them. Now Muslims pretend to speak on behalf of him.
The more sordid the Islamic present seems, the more we are told of the glories of the Islamic past; and the most glorious among the glories of Islam are the “Islamic science,” the Islamic contribution to all Western sciences. However, according to Reliance of the Traveller, the following list are denied being a blasphemy: sorcery, philosophy, magic, astrology, the sciences of the materialists, and anything that creates doubts. These are unlawful, serious affronts to Islam, and a form of apostasy. Ghazali in his The Incoherence of the Philosophers rejects the connection exist between causes and effects, which are basic to any science. According Ghazali, causes and effects are inadmissible, because they limit the absolute freedom of Allah and his will. The Reliance of the Traveller asserts “that things in themselves or by their own nature have any causal influence independent of the will of Allah” is apostasy.
Yet, without the notion of cause and effect, any science is impossible. Therefore, the condemnation of the Reliance of the Traveller of “the sciences of the materialists” and philosophy leads to condemnation of all secular sciences. If one cannot discuss the nature of any object, whether material or spiritual, because it conditions how it affects and is affected by other objects that means condemnation of any effort to understand anything.
For Bassam Tibi, the reformist Muslim, all along the Islamic history, what is called science was viewed as literally Islamic science, meaning the study of the Qur’an, Sunnah, and the glorious Arab history. Rational sciences were – in medieval Islam – considered to be foreign sciences and at times heretical. It was termed ‘Ulûmal-Qudamā'(the sciences of the Ancients), that it, the Greeks.”Islamic science” was totally dependent upon translations that ultimately made by non-Muslims of the achievements of pre-Islamic cultures, Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Jews, Christians, Assyrians. The Arabs of the desert, warriors of raids and booty, knew no languages and had no intellectual curiosity. A striking number of Muslim thinkers and scientists were Persians and Assyrians, who totally owed to their pre-Islamic heritage than if anything to Islam.
This issue should also be viewed and examined by the test of history: If Islam has scientifically contributed so much to humanity in almost every aspect of human life, how come there was nothing, almost zero, of these before the 9th century, and nothing after the 13th century? If the Arab-Muslims are so talented, can anyone explain this perplexing fact? Science does not stop. Science does not disappear abruptly. Science is an ever going processes of learning and developing, pile on pile, error and trial, erring and correcting, from the past to the present, and from the present to the future. Science does not appear out of the blue and does not disappear out of the blue. Science is created and it develops. It takes efforts and investments to cultivate and ameliorate it, but it is part of of the progress of humanity.
Today, the Muslim world produces a disproportionately very small amount of scientific output and much of it is of low quality, if any. In numerical terms, Muslim countries having almost 25% of world’s population, generate less than 5% of its science, with innovations almost to zero. How does one explain the huge gap in scientific output between the Muslim world and the West or East Asia? The past achievements of scientists clearly show that Islamic religion is the key problem facing scientific achievements.
Again, where are the Islamic scientific achievements from the 13th century on? What are their achievements until today? As for contemporary situation, how about investigating all 56 Islamic countries’ situation today? What are their economic, social, cultural, scientific situation let alone their achievements? All we see around is misery, wretchedness of life, and authoritarian patrimonial oppressive rule. No freedoms and no civil rights. Islam forbids. Islam demands submission and devotion to Allah alone. Pretentiousness is notorious. Pretentiousness without any proven basis is not only a shame to those who hold it, but total impossible inhuman trait to accept. However, it is much worse to those who accept it without investigation and understanding, and still carry it on to shape the ignorant minds and to influence world public opinion with fabrications.
Regrettably, it looks like that Muslim propagators have taken control on Wikipedia’s user-created and many other internet devices, to propagate on many subjects concerning Islam and the Middle East. It is highly salient in articles on the history of sciences and Islamic involvement. This is what is so dangerous when depending on the internet, and Wikipedia in particular. The articles have been thoroughly overrun by Islamic supremacist propagators and their Western supporters. Reading them, one is overwhelmed by uncorroborated and unsubstantiated material, which absolutely support the Islamic propagation. This process influences the learned people that wish to understand, and therefore wirld public opinion, the media, and by all means the politicians. The result is twisted, fabricated and false information.
The “Islamic Golden Age.”In our contemporary twisted world and upside down language, the allegedly ‘anti-imperialist’ Marxists in Western world love brutal, aggressive, oppressive imperialism, as long as it comes in an Islamic shape. They deeply hate and totally fight Western imperialism and colonialism, but put a blind eye to the fact that the worst Imperialists and colonialists ever in the entire history, the worst genocide and ethnic cleansing acts were perpetrated by Muslims under the banner of the worst and cruelest religion, Islam. European medieval peoples are invariable portrayed as barbarians with no culture of their own, while Islamic barbarian and primitive culture is praised as being the best and advanced. Therefore, as Islamic and Bolshevik propaganda dispersed around, the naïve Westerner is confused, perplexed, and wonders about his own religion, history and culture and what is wrong and what is right.
The issue of Islam vs. Europe in the Middle-Ages is repeatedly flooded with fabrications promoted by Muslims propagators and Western Bolsheviks, and accepted by ignorant who know nothing of the issue, and do not ask questions. This is one of many cases in which experienced and well-rooted sciences is being rebuffed in favor of myths disseminated by Muslim propagation. People who know very little about the issues have taken control on knowledge and dictate their distorting extreme lies on world public opinion, the media, and even the politicians. The Islamic Golden Age is one of the biggest myths that are still with us.
Taking this line, Germany’s Der Spiegel, Europe’s largest weekly magazine, hailed the Muslim al-Andalus as a Multicultural Model for Europe: “For nearly 800 years, inhabitants of al-Andalus, as the Arab dynasties called their empire on the Iberian Peninsula, allowed Jews, Christians and Muslims to coexist in a spirit of mutual respect, a situation that benefited all.” Even the U.S. State Department has proclaimed that “during the Islamic period in Spain, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace and mutual respect, creating a diverse society in which vibrant exchanges of ideas took place.”
Please read these few lines of total ignorance and stupidity: “800 Years” (!); “coexist in a spirit of mutual respect”(!); “in peace and mutual respect, creating a diverse society” (!). Now the question: did they ever try to learn the issue, or just followed like monkeys the Islamic propagation? Yet still, this is the voice of ignorance. One can also find the voice of evil: Islamic propagator, Karen Armstrong, enunciates this when she says that “until 1492, Jews and Christians lived peaceably and productively together in Muslim Spain – a coexistence that was impossible elsewhere in Europe.”
The vast volume of the myths, in fact sheer lies, were related to the so-called “Golden Age” of Islamic rule in Andalusia. Here are the facts: Spain was conquered in 710-716 by Arab tribes. Followed the conquest, there was a massive colonization of the Iberian Peninsula; huge Berber and Arab immigration; and an intensive acts of slaughter of Christians, conversion of churches into mosques, and massive pillages, enslavement, and deportations. The only toleration was when Christians and Jews acted in submission, like the Muslims expected to as Dhimmis. Segregated in special quarters, they had to wear discriminatory clothing. Subjected to heavy taxes, misery and poverty were the common.
Society in Andalusia, occupied Spain, was sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines, with the Arab tribes at the top of the hierarchy; followed by the Berbers who were never recognized as equals, despite their Islamization; lower in the scale came the Mullawadun, converts; and at the very bottom, the Dhimmi Christians and Jews. The slogan that went prime during the Islamic reign in Spain was the quotation of the Qur’an (58:19): ‘Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget Allah’s warning. They are Satan’s party; they will surely be the losers!’
The fact is that the humiliating status imposed on the Dhimmis and confiscation of their land did provoke many revolts, punished by horrifying massacres. The socio-political history of Andalusia was characterized by a particularly oppressive Dhimmitude that is completely incompatible with notions of equality and liberalism. As Bat Yeor and Paul Fregosi prove, al-Andalus represented the land of Jihad par excellence. Indeed, the Islamic “policy of tolerance and egalitarianism,” as Muslim propagators claim, was shown by the raiding expeditions every year, sometimes twice a year, against the Christian Spanish kingdoms to the north, the Basque regions, or France and the Rhone valley, plundering them and bringing back booty and slaves. Andalusian corsairs attacked and invaded along the Sicilian and Italian coasts and the Aegean Islands, looting and burning the peoples.
In 846, 11,000 Muslims on 73 ships invaded Rome and sacked the Basilica. They looted old St. Peter’s basilica and desecrated his grave. The Muslims then trashed the remains of St. Paul, which were in the historic church, San Paolo Fuori le Mura. As a result of this invasion, Pope Leo IVbegan building a massive wall to protect the Vatican from Muslims raiders.A miracle saved Rome at the Battle of Ostia in 849, when Muslim ship were decimated by a violent storm and captured. When Pope, John VIII (872-882) failed in rallying a defense, he was forced to pay an annual extortion tribute taxes. Muslims plundered the coasts of Italy, and in 883 they destroyed the renowned monastery of Monte Cassino, and killed its abbot, St. Bercharius in the altar. They destroyed the abbey of San Vincezo in 884, and the abbies of Farfa and Subiaco in 890. At the Battle of Garigliano River in 916, Muslims captured Reggio and Calabria, selling inhabitants into North African slavery.
Huge number of people were deported to slavery in Andalusia, where the Muslims kept a militia of tens of thousands of Christian slaves (Saqaliba), and a harems filled with captured Christian concubines. In Granada, the Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela and his son Joseph, who protected the Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 and 1066, followed by the annihilation of the Jewish population. It is estimated that up to five thousand Jews perished in the pogrom by Muslims that accompanied the 1066 assassination. The Muslim Berber Almohads in Spain and North Africa (1130-1232) wreaked destruction on both the Jewish and Christian populations. This devastation, massacre, captivity, forced conversion and slaughter was described by the Jewish poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, the Muslims removed the children from their families, placing them in the care of Muslim educators. Maimonides, experiencing the Almohad persecutions, had to flee Cordoba with his entire family in 1148, temporarily residing in Fez, before finding asylum in Fatimid Egypt.
Richard Fletcher offers a sobering observations and a valid summary assessment of the real interfaith relationships in Muslim Spain, and refutes contemporary propagation of obfuscating Islamic history. The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was of tranquility…Tolerance? Ask the Jews of Granada who were massacred in 1066, or the Christians who were deported by the Almoravids to Morocco in 1126 (Moorish Spain).
It is imperative to start understanding the issue by analyzing the cultural-scientific aspects: Muslim scholars did not seriously and could not religiously study other cultures and accept them with fairness, and therefore cannot express sympathy, egalitarianism and good will to the other. It also means that Islam lacks the basic important ingredients of scientific research:
a) Curiosity, the urge to know, to understand and to investigate, as the world of Muslims is always arranged and Islam regulates the believer’s life on each and every aspect, 24 hours a day. The Islamic educational system is to learn by heart. This is the most praised, cherished, and recommended demand of the believer and in the Islamic Madāris. The Shātir (skillful) in Islam is he who quotes by heart as many Qur’an verse as he can; he who knows the stories of Muhammad by heart and tell them proudly, and he who strive for the Islamic law to be the only law of the land. These are the most appreciated, welcomed and adored in the Islamic society.
b) Unlike the cultural and scientific approach in the West, which advocate skepticism, self-criticism and even self-blame; these attitudes simply do not exist in the Islamic religious system. Criticism, open-mindedness, and objective appreciation are totally missing in Islam, as the imperative to ask questions and to criticize has become in Islam a blasphemy.The believers should not, in fact must not ask questions: everything depends on Allah’s will and everything operates according to Allah’s demands. When the Muslims came to the idea from the 11th century on that Islam has the total human wisdom from the beginning of history to the end of the world, that there is nothing in the completeness of Islam, they accordingly also denied, neglected, and even prohibited the adoption of Western ideas, being Bid’ah (forbidden as heresy).
c) This approach leads to another component: in Islam the Golden Way is absent. By virtue of being absolute axioms, all Islamic notions are beyond proof. Islamic epistemology is clear and decisive: good and evil do not exist in and of themselves; they are as Allah proclaimed them. Allah does not decree or prohibit certain behaviors or actions because they are good or evil; but the actions are good or evil because Allah defined them as such.The faithful always avoid evil and always pursue absolute good (Sûrat al-‘Imrān, 3:110, 114, 132; Sûrat at-Taubah, 9:71, 112). Consequently, there is no room for moral or conscientious considerations in reference to infidels and there is no reason to feel empathy towards them (Sûrat al-Baqarah, 2:62; Sûrat Hā Min as-Sajdah, 41:30; Sûrat al-Fath, 48:29). By its innate essence, Islam is globally superior. It therefore does not engage in self-criticism over the actions or behavior of a faithful Muslim, as it is the epitome of perfection.
d) Islam’s view of the “self” versus the “other” is absolutely ethnocentric. Everything is perceived in unqualified terms of black and white. Islam divides the world in two: Dār al-Islām against Dār al-Harb, the good and just society versus the evil and impure society; absolute righteousness as compared to ultimate evil; Heaven againt Hell. The operative expression of this juxtaposition becomes evident in the al-Wallā’ wal-Barā’ approach: the supreme and unqualified loyalty and love for Islam versus the absolute rejection, enmity and hatred for the infidels. This is the most important manifestation of the Islamic faith, second only to the belief in the unity of Allah (Tawhīd): (Sûrat al-Baqarah, 2:257; Sûrat al-‘Imrān, 3:28, 31-2; Sûrat an-Nisā’, 4:76, 89; Sûrat al-Mā’idah, 5:51, 54; Sûrat at-Taubah, 9:71; Sûrat an-Nûr, 24:2; Sûrat al-Mumtahanah, 60:4).
e) Many commandment in the Qur’an can make this religiously legitimate: the verses that declare Muslims are the best of all human beings on the universe; the verses that declare the Muslims are always doing only good and always forbidding the bad and evil. These have a clear direction that lead the Muslims to freely expropriate everything that belong to the other, from the material to the spiritual, without any guilt remorse and with clean conscience. Indeed, there have been various attempts at historical revisionism concerning Islamic contributions to the world. These attempts are yet political propaganda than academic scholarship. After all, it is religiously acceptable in Islam to deceive and to act falsely if it promotes the interests of Islam. Allah deceives the infidels by Taqīyah and Kitmān, lying and deceiving the infidels to advance Allah’s cause, is permitted, and even prescribed, to Muslims.
f) There cannot be a Golden Age as Islam does not believe in “conquering” foreign territories; instead, there is only Futûhāt – introducing the world to the light of Islam and delivering the infidels from the darkness in which they live to the light of Islam. This is why the Muslim regimes have never expressed any remorse, or apologized for their past conquests or their present violence. The outcome was Arabization and Islamization of the indigenous natives. This is how the Middle East was mainly Pharaonic; Phoenician; Babylonian; Ugarit; Chaldean; Jewish, and Berber in North-Africa. Iran was Sassanid; East Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan were Buddhist. All these lands were Islamized and/or Arabized. Most of these peoples have perished, or come to extinction.
For Bernard Lewis the issue is clear. The golden age of equal rights to minorities and egalitarianism was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented by Jews in nineteenth-century Europe as a reproach to the Christian religious Antisemitism. He continues by referring to the myth of Islamic Golden Age in broad perspective: we live in a time when great efforts have been made, and continue to be made to falsify the record of the past and to make history a tool of propaganda; when governments, religious movements, political parties, and sectional groups of every kind are busy rewriting history as they would wish it to have been, as they would like their followers to believe that it was. All this is very dangerous indeed, to ourselves and to others, however we may define otherness – dangerous to our common humanity. Because, make no mistake, those who are unwilling to confront the past will be unable to understand the present and unfit to face the future.
From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience. It is the duty of those who have accepted Allah’s word and message to strive unceasingly to convert or at least to subjugate the infidels. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state.
His conclusion: Islamic Golden Age has never reached the gates of Islam, it was a big myth. Muslims and their Western collaborators have no shame added with of impudence stating that the real face of Islam was exhibited in Spain. Their statements are so deep on the fabricating side of the lie that the ignorant and the stupid go side by side with the evil to accept this falsification. Toby Huff warns out that if Islam had taken over Europe, the later Western scientific achievements would have been impossible: If Spain had persisted as an Islamic land into the later centuries, it would have retained all the ideological, legal, and institutional defects of Islamic civilization. A Spain dominated by Islamic law would have been unable to found new universities based on European model of legally autonomous corporate governance, as corporations do not exist in Islamic law. The Islamic model of education rested on the absolute primacy of Fiqh, of legal studies, and learning by heart is a total failure that leads to illiteracy.
It is recommended to read the online essay in Jihad Watch by Bat Ye’or and Andrew G. Bostom: “There were rarely periods of peace. al-Andalus represented the land of jihad par excellence. Every year, sometimes twice a year, raiding expeditions were sent to ravage the Christian Spanish kingdoms to the north, the Basque regions, or France and the Rhone valley, bringing back booty and slaves. Andalusian corsairs attacked and invaded along the Sicilian and Italian coasts, even as far as the Aegean Islands, looting and burning as they went. Thousands of people were deported to slavery in Andalusia, where the caliph kept a militia of tens of thousands of Christian slaves brought from all parts of Christian Europe (the Saqaliba), and a harem filled with captured Christian women.”
Muslims were for the most part uninterested in other cultures and rarely bothered to learn their languages. The creation of a scientific discipline was done by other, never by Muslims. They showed little interest in the history of their pre-Islamic ancestors, let alone that of other nations, and aggressively destroyed historical remains unearthed in their own countries. They were concentrated in their own religion, and in conquering and plundering the infidels’ lands. This is the only perhaps the best science they have excelled.
There was much more, and the best to testify what the face of Islam is the greatest ever top Jewish philosopher, physician and scientist, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides, whom Muslim propaganda shamelessly and impudently claim he was a Muslim convert. He was a proud Jew, one of the greatest human mind who despised Islam. For Maimonides Islam is barbarian and violent, the worst nation that hates Israel and acts to eliminate the Jewish people. Muhammad was a deceiver, fanatical and Islam is savage religion.
The fact is clear: Muslims have spent 1400 years trying to eradicate Greek studies and the ancient peoples’ scientific achievements. Islam acted also to demolish the Greek and the ancient Middle East heritage and societies whenever and wherever they came and occupied, from India to Andalusia. Now Muslim propagators shamelessly want to take the credit for “preserving the Greek cultural and scientific heritage” and claiming to be in the forefront of sciences. Yet, no cultural sphere with one and a half billion people contributes so little to the development of science or the arts in our time.
After the 13th century, the Arab world saw very few innovations in any of the scientific fields. The Renaissance, the Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, passed totally unnoticed in the Muslim world. It is related to Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, in late 19th century asking why the Muslim torch became extinguished and it remains buried in profound darkness.
*part of a larger book titled, Why Islam is a Danger to the World: A Scholarly Rebuttal of Muslim Propaganda, be published by Mellen Press.
Religion
Congeniality Between Islam and Democracy

In the contemporary era, compatibility between Islam and democracy is one of the most recent and controversial debate. Diverse opinions are found but to effectively compare the congeniality between the two, one should first understand democracy and its features then compare this political system with Islamic governance. Democracy as a model of self-government can co-exist with Islam because they have principles like separation of powers, checks and balance, legitimacy, constitution, accountability and protection of human rights in common.
About half of the states today have democratic form of government. Starting as Athenian form of direct democracy in 15th century to today’s representative and liberal forms of democracy (indirect democracies), a number of states have gone through democratization. It has spread beyond Western Europe to Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, (most) Asia and Africa. When Soviet Union collapsed, democracy trampled communism. The soviet allies, that practiced communism, adopted democracy as solution for modernity and freedom. Democracy also advanced to Middle East in the hopes of end of dictatorship, but there, it got rejected. It led to the idea that Islam can never be compatible with democracy. However, recent happenings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt have raised this question once again. This leads to the assumption that democracy is static and cannot adopt other cultures, which is not true because we see evolution in west which embraced of democratic principles.
In theoretical application of Islam, Middle Eastern Countries do understand and appreciate democratic process and its meaning in their own unique way. Then why Muslims Countries have not been democratized? This leads to question of the compatibility between Islam and democracy. West believes that attachment of religious values to democratic government is contagious but there are a number of values common in Islam and democracy which make them compatible. For this reason first we should understand what is democracy and its features and then what similarities exist between Islam and Democracy.
According to President Abraham Lincoln, in his famed 1863 Gettysburg Address may have best-defined democracy as a “…government of the people, by the people, for the people…”.The core principle of democracy is self-rule. The basic features of democracy are separation of powers, checks and balances, existence of constitution, periodic elections and protection of fundamental rights.
There are a number of Muslim like Ahmad Moussalli and Muhammad Asad and Non-Muslim scholars who talk about compatibility of the two. They give importance to the principles of consultation, people’s will, transparency, and Accountability. For example, Robin Wright, a well-known American expert on the Middle East and the Muslim world writes: “neither Islam nor its culture is the major obstacle to political modernity”. John O. Voll and John L. Esposito, two bridge-builders between Islam and the West articulate: “The Islamic heritage, in fact, contains concepts that provide a foundation for contemporary Muslims to develop authentically Islamic programs of democracy.”
Below are the similarities between Islam and Democracy.
Constitutional Government: Like democracy, Islamic governance is fundamentally a “constitutional” government, in which the constitution reflects the agreement of the governed to govern according to a specified and agreed-upon framework of rights and duties. For Muslims, the constitution is based on the Qur’an and Sunnah. No authority, other than the governed, has the authority to repeal or amend such a constitution. As a result, Islamic administration cannot be despotic, hereditary, or militaristic in nature. Such a government structure is egalitarian in nature, and egalitarianism is one of Islam’s defining characteristics. It is also commonly agreed that the Islamic republic in Medina was founded on a constitutional foundation and a pluralistic framework that included non-Muslims.
Participatory: An Islamic political system is participative. The system is participatory from the establishment of the institutional structure of governance to its operation. It means that leadership and policies will be implemented with complete, gender-neutral participation of the governed through a popular electoral process. Muslims can use their ingenuity to institute and continuously enhance their systems, based on Islamic precepts and human experience to date. This participation feature is actually Islamic Shura (consultation).
Accountability: This is a necessary corollary to a democratic system. Within an Islamic system, leaders and those in positions of responsibility are held accountable to the people. According to the Islamic framework, all Muslims are answerable to Allah and his divine guidance. However, this is more in a theological sense. People are the focus of practical accountability. Thus, the Khulafa ar-Rashidoon were both Khalifat-ur-Rasool (representative of the Messenger) and Khalifat-ul- Muslimeen (representative of the Muslims)
Legitimacy: Just like in democracy, the people are allowed to select who to govern them i.e. give legitimacy to administer their affairs, in Islam, Jurists have the authority to approve any political decision made by the monarch and the power to protest to the ruler’s decision if it is contradictory to Shariah. As a result, the political elite required the legitimacy of legal professors. Thus, in the ancient past, we can observe how jurists and kings work together constantly. That close historical relationship between religious interpretations and the political arena explains why Islam attempts to establish norms and laws that govern not only the personal life of the believer but also the public domain.
Separation of powers: Islamic constitutions, like the one Iran uses, establish the executive and the legislature branches of government. Legislature functions under the sole supervision of the Imam and Muslim jurists of the Ummah in accordance with new legal provisions. This demonstrates that all three institutions of government are free to carry out their respective duties without outside intervention and practice effective decision making among them without victimization of any individual or organization.
Protection of fundamental rights: Islam and democracy are also compatible because both promote and protect fundamental rights of individuals. Islam, as a welfare state, stresses on provision of basic human rights (food, shelter, security) with equality, justice, freedom, self-determination for all. It also provides rights of private ownership. It creates laws and principles for assurance of these rights. Civil rights movements are permitted in both Islam and democracy hence ensuring that these rights are promoted in an effective and clear manner.
In conclusion, by comparing the basic values of democracy and Islam, it is evident that there is congeniality between the two. Understanding this compatibility can help Muslim states better grasp the purpose of democracy and work towards the welfare of their citizens. The common principles of separation of powers, checks and balances, legitimacy, constitution, accountability and protection of separation of human rights provide a foundation of a harmonious coexistence between Islam and democracy.
Religion
Shiites, not Jews, emerge as a touchstone of Saudi moderation

Saudi Arabia has removed anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli references from Islamic studies schoolbooks, according to an Israeli textbook watchdog.
The watchdog, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), said the deletions were part of a broader textbook revision that also eliminated anti-Christian references and toned-down negative portrayals of infidels and polytheists.
Instead of explicitly referring to infidels and hypocrites, the revised textbooks asserted that on the Day of Judgement. Hell, “the home of painful punishment,” would be reserved for “deniers,” rejecting Mohammed’s prophecy. Deniers replaced the term infidel or hypocrite.
In its 203-page report, Impact-se further noted that problematic concepts of jihad and martyrdom were also deleted, while two newly released ‘Critical Thinking’ textbooks stressed notions of peace and tolerance.
The report acknowledged an improved approach to gender issues, including removing “a significant amount of homophobic content.“ Nevertheless, the textbooks maintained a traditional approach to gender, the report said.
However, the review suggested that progress was limited in altering attitudes towards Shiite and Sufi Muslims, considered heretics by Wahhabism, the austere ultra-conservative strand of Islam that was dominant in the kingdom until the rise in 2015 of King Salman, and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“Some problematic examples remain…in the approach to perceived heretical practices associated with the Shi‘a and Sufism,” the report said.
The report will likely be read against the backdrop of US efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to follow the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco in formalising relations with Israel and the recent Chinese-mediated Saudi-Iranian agreement to restore ties broken off in 2016.
In contrast with the three Arab states that unconditionally established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020, Saudi Arabia has made formal relations dependent on Israeli moves to solve its conflict with the Palestinians.
Israeli media reported that Bahrain had mediated a recent telephone conversation between Mr. Bin Salman, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.
Mr. Netanyahu has made diplomatic relations with the kingdom a priority. He has pressed Mr. Bin Salman to allow direct flights between Israel and Jeddah, the Saudi Red Sea gateway to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, during next month’s annual pilgrimage. Without direct flights, Palestinian pilgrims have to transit through a third country to reach the kingdom.
Prospects for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are dim, with Mr. Netanyahu heading the most religiously ultra-conservative and nationalist government in Israeli history.
Israeli-Palestinian tensions have significantly increased since the government took office in December. Earlier this month, they led to five days of Israeli airstrikes against targets in Gaza and Palestinians firing rockets into Israel in response.
Complicating matters, Saudi Arabia wants the United States to offer the kingdom more binding security guarantees, grant it unrestricted access to US weaponry, and assist in developing a peaceful nuclear program as part of any agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.
Long in the making, the revision of Saudi textbooks constitutes a gesture towards the United States and Israel.
However it is, first and foremost, designed to counter the ultra-conservative, supremacist, and intolerant religious concepts that have shaped the education system since the kingdom was founded.
The revisions are also crucial to Saudi Arabia’s efforts to diversify its oil export-dependent economy, prepare its youth for competition in the labour market, and project the one-time secretive kingdom that banned women from driving as an open, forward-looking 21st-century middle power.
Furthermore, the revisions bolster Saudi Arabia’s quest for religious soft power as the custodian of Islam’s holiest cities and a beacon of a socially liberal moderate Islam.
Getting Saudi Arabia revamping its textbooks has been a long, drawn-out process. The United States and others have pushed for changes since the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. Most of the perpetrators were Saudi nationals.
Yet, Impact-se, Human Rights Watch, and the Washington-based Institute of Gulf Affairs, a Saudi opposition think tank, first reported progress in 2021, two decades later.
The more limited progress in redressing prejudiced attitudes towards Shiite and Sufi Muslims compared to Jews and Christians suggests the continued influence of ultra-conservative religious thought in Saudi Arabia despite Mr. Bin Salman’s social reforms.
It also puts into perspective the kingdom’s reluctance to anchor the reforms in religious as well as civil law, an approach propagated by Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s Indonesia-based largest and most moderate civil society movement.
On the plus side, Saudi Arabia’s revised textbooks no longer describe visitors to sacred figures’ tombs, a widespread Shiite practice, as “evil” and “cursed” by the Prophet Mohammed.
Nevertheless, textbooks still condemn such visits as innovations banned by Wahhabism. For example, one revised textbook implicitly described tomb visits to supplicate the deceased rather than God as a polytheistic practice to be punished in Hell.
“Students learn that polytheism is dangerous, as it is the ‘most heinous’ of sins. However, while the 2021 edition also taught that those who practice it will be punished with eternity in Hell, this was removed in 2022,” the report said.
At times, the Impact-se report conflated thinking among some Arab and Sunni Muslims with Islam in general, particularly regarding Shiite-majority Iran.
In one instance, the report noted that in the textbooks, “Islamic historical animus toward Persia is maintained through claims that the assassination of the second caliph was a Persian conspiracy.”
The animus is maintained by some Sunni Muslims rather than Muslims as such. It relates to the killing by an enslaved Persian of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second of the first four 7th-century caliphs to succeed Prophet Mohamed.
On an optimistic note, the report concluded, “Saudi efforts to reform the curriculum reveal a reasonably consistent step-by-step approach…and one…hopes that the approach will be applied to the handful of problematic content remaining in some textbooks.”
The report did not say that tackling problematic attitudes towards Shiites and Sufis would constitute one indication of how far Saudi rulers are willing to venture in challenging ultra-conservative Muslim precepts.
Religion
Are Muslim religious conservatism and political Islam making a comeback?

Little did Elianu Hia know that a video he posted on Facebook in early 2021 would shape Indonesian policy and turn his life upside down.
A Christian in a Muslim-majority nation, Mr. Hia objected to vocational school authorities in the West Sumatran city of Padang, obliging his daughter to wear a hijab.
In a secretly taped video, his daughter’s teacher insisted that wearing a hijab was mandatory. The teacher demanded that Mr. Hia put his daughter’s refusal in writing, which would have been a first step to expelling her. The video went viral.
In response, Indonesian Religious Affairs Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas and his home affairs and education counterparts threatened to sanction state schools seeking to impose religious garb in violation of government rules and regulations.
“Religions do not promote conflict, neither do they justify acting unfairly against those who are different,” said Mr. Qoumas, a leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim civil society movement and foremost advocate of theological reform in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The school complied. Over the last two years, the number of Christian girls who shed the hijab has grown. But at the same time, Mr. Hia received threatening messages on Facebook and WhatsApp. “I lost count,” he told Human Rights Watch. “Hundreds of them.”
Mr. Hia’s air conditioning business started to lose customers. “Some customers asked me whether I was the one who was protesting the mandatory hijab rule. And they stopped requesting my services,” Mr.Hia said.
Struggling to repay a bank loan, he fired five employees and sold his truck and minibus. Almost two years later, Mr. Hia and his wife decided to sell their house while waiting for their daughter to finish high school. “I cannot earn enough money now. We have to move out of West Sumatra,” he said.
Mr. Hia’s experience tells the story of see-saw swings in the Muslim world between trends towards increased religious individuality, more personal understanding of religion, and skepticism towards religious and temporal authority, and support for greater public adherence to religious norms and often state-aligned clerics.
The swings potentially influence the public standing of Islamic scholars who align themselves with autocratic rulers like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who has subjugated the kingdom’s religious establishment to his will and pushed ahead with far-reaching social reforms anchored in civil but not religious law.
Potentially, the swings also suggest that calls by Nahdlatul Ulama for reform of Islamic law in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country and democracy, may encounter greater resistance beyond the group’s Javan stronghold in the archipelago state.
Finally, the swings point to a possible comeback of political Islam, a decade after groups like the Muslim Brotherhood appeared to be down and out due to a Saudi and United Arab Emirates-backed public backlash that rolled back their initial success in the wake of the 2011 popular Arab revolts.
The revolts toppled the autocratic leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya. However, the Brotherhood suffered its most significant setback with a military coup in Egypt in 2013 that removed from office Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brother and the country’s first and only democratically elected president. The coup and brutal repression sent the Brotherhood into exile, where it has lingered ever since.
“Results from nationally representative public opinion surveys…strongly suggest that political Islam is making a comeback. In most countries surveyed, young and old citizens demonstrate a clear preference for giving religion a greater role in politics. This is the first time that support for political Islam has increased meaningfully…since the Arab Uprisings of 2011,” said Michael Robbins, director and co-principal investigator of Arab Barometer, a group that regularly surveys public opinion in the Middle East.
Mr. Hia’s story is one more piece of anecdotal evidence of a revival of conservatism also reflected in the polling of Mr. Robbins and others, even if the surveys suggest contradictory attitudes.
In a survey conducted in 2022 by UAE-based Asda’s BCW, 41 per cent of 3,400 young Arabs in 17 Arab countries aged 18 to 24 said religion was the most important element of their identity, with nationality, family and/or tribe, Arab heritage, and gender lagging far behind.
Arab Barometer noted a stark increase in the number of Muslim youth polled in several Arab countries that wanted clerics have greater influence on government decisions. “In 2021-2022, roughly half or more in five of ten countries surveyed agreed that religious clerics should influence decisions of government,” Mr. Robbins said.
“While youth ages 18-29 have led the return to religion across MENA (the Middle East and North Africa), the rise in support for religion in politics is more widespread across society. In most countries, both older and younger members of society are shifting their views in concert,” Mr. Robbins added.
Similarly, more than half, 56 per cent, in the Asda’a BCW survey said their country’s legal system should be based on Shariah or Islamic law. Seventy per cent expressed concern about the loss of traditional values and culture. Sixty-five per cent argued that preserving their religious and cultural identity was more important than creating a globalized society.
Yet, 73 per cent, up from 58 per cent in 2018, felt that religion played too much of a role in the Middle East. In addition, 77 per cent believed Arab religious institutions should be reformed.
While the support for the reform of religious institutions may work in Nahdlatul Ulama’s favour and potentially threaten the autocratic grip on religion in Middle Eastern states, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s success in this week’s first round of presidential and parliamentary elections offers further food for thought about the prospects of political Islam.
Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the May 14 parliamentary elections while the president is favoured to win a May 28 run-off for the presidency against opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Nationalism may have been a major driver of the electoral outcome, but so was religious conservatism.
“Erdogan has formed an unbreakable bond with Turkey’s largest sociopolitical bloc: religious conservatives. He also enchants them with a grand narrative: despite nefarious enemies and heinous conspiracies, he is making Turkey great and Muslim again,” said Mustafa Akyol, a Washington-based Turkish scholar of Islam.
Islamist scholars from across the Muslim world backed the alliance. Their support may not have played a major role in the first round but indicated political Islam’s newly found assertiveness.
In a statement, the scholars called on Turks to vote for Mr. Erdogan and non-Turkish Muslims to support his campaign.
They implicitly contrasted Turkey with its religious soft power rivals, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia, which have engaged with Israel to varying degrees and stress interfaith dialogue even though they differ sharply in their approaches and goals.
“Turkey has consistently defended the Prophet against Western offences, restored the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque (in Istanbul) to its original status, and advocated for Jerusalem and its ongoing issues,” the scholars said.
Controversially, Mr. Erdogan in 2020 returned the Hagia Sofia, a sixth-century Orthodox church-turned-mosque-turned-museum, to its original status as a Muslim house of worship.
Mr. Erdogan vowed that the conversion was “the harbinger of the liberation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” Islam’s third holiest site in Jerusalem.
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