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Dawkins Bashed For Telling The Truth About Anti-Science Islam
Richard Dawkins' tweet:

"All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge."

He added:

"They did great things in the Middle Ages, though."

The furor, from a story in the Independent, by Katie Hodge:

He responded to the barrage of ensuing criticism by telling his followers: "A statement of simple fact is not bigotry. And science by Muslims was great in the distant past."
In a further posting he wrote: "Where would we be without alchemy? Dark Age achievements undoubted. But since then?"

He sought to justify the controversial observation by adding: "Why mention Muslim Nobels rather than any other group? Because we so often hear boasts about (a) their total numbers and (b) their science."

One angry Twitter user hit out at the remarks telling the author: "You absolutely disgust me."

Writer Caitlin Moran added: "Think it's time someone turned Richard Dawkins off and then on again", while Channel 4 News Economics Editor Faisal Islam questioned Prof Dawkins' "spurious use of data."

"Spurious"? Trinity College Nobel Prizewinners here.

Muslim Nobel winners here.

From the Middle East Quarterly: "Islam and Science Have Parted Ways."

From The Chronicle Review, "Does Islam Stand Against Science?" by Wisconsin Public Radio's Steve Paulson:

Islam has a long and tangled history with science, but there's one point that nearly everyone acknowledges: Science in the Muslim world is now in a sorry state. "It's dismal," says Taner Edis, a Turkish-American physicist at Truman State University, in Missouri. "Right now, if all Muslim scientists working in basic science vanished from the face of the earth, the rest of the scientific community would barely notice."
...Guessoum agrees: "It's abysmal by all kinds of measures: how many books and publications are written or translated in the Muslim world; how many patents come from Muslim inventors; how Muslim students are performing in the international arena."

Data collected by the World Bank and Unesco confirm this bleak assessment. A study of 20 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference found that these countries spent 0.34 percent of their gross domestic product on scientific research from 1996 to 2003, which was just one-seventh of the global average.

Those Muslim countries have fewer than 10 scientists, engineers, and technicians for every 1,000 people, compared with the world average of 40, and 140 for the developed world. And they contribute only about 1 percent of the world's published scientific papers. Another study of OIC nations found that scientists in 17 Arabic-speaking countries produced a total of 13,444 scientific publications in 2005, which was 2,000 fewer than what just Harvard University produced.

Just where religion figures into this scientific black hole is a complicated question, though anti-science pronouncements by Islamic clerics certainly haven't helped.

...It takes a courageous--or perhaps foolish--Muslim scholar to examine the specific historical circumstances in which the Quran was written, or to criticize the Prophet Muhammad.

"For Muslims, this is the word of God," Guessoum says. "The Quran is the revelation. It was written down as revealed to Muhammad. This is dogma, so it's harder to claim that everything is open for interpretation."

The "science" in it, in fact, is not to be questioned. As Todd Pitock writes in Discover:

In many Muslim countries, science must obey the Koran.

From a cached page from Answering Islam:

When Muslims adhere to their religion it is then that they fall behind because of the educational system. There are 1 billion Muslims and only about 16 million Jews. Only about 8 Muslims have won the Nobel prize for science and nearly two hundred Jews have won it. Why? Education is the difference. Muslim education has focused on the Qur'an, and what is not in the Qur'an is not worth knowing. Western education has been open in its approach to knowledge. You can ask any question in the Western educational environment. You cannot question anything in the Qur'an, or Mohammed, or the Sharia. You are to obey. Learn the rules and obey.

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Comments

I dont think Islam has EVER contributed to science.

The era to which they are refering is one where muslims may have controlled an area politically but not with a large enough majority to suppress the more educated minorites to the point of near extinction

lujlp at August 9, 2013 6:14 AM

And 5 are Peace Prizes, which are basically doggie treats for politicians.

KateC at August 9, 2013 6:47 AM

And let's guess the religion of the perpetrators of this crime. Any takers? Anyone? Bueller?

Flynne at August 9, 2013 7:22 AM

Many of the "common" names for prominent starts that astronomers use are Arabic in origin, and some of the early work on grouping stars into constellations was done in the Arab world. However, it's my understanding that most of the legwork for that was done pre-Islam. That sort of makes sense, since the primary motivation for naming stars and constellations would have been in recognizing them for navigational purposes. (Western aviators did the same thing in the Southern Hemisphere in the early 20th century; many of the southern stars and constallations have names that are of modern origin.) There was also some Arabic work in medicine and chemistry, although to be honest, the state of those two sciences worldwide advanced very little between Roman times and the dawn of the 19th century.

The big problem with Islam is that it teaches that Allah and his works are completely unfathomable to the common man. If you are an average Akbar in the street, your job is to submit, and attempting to understand is beyond your station. So knowledge is contained in the hands of a small elite, who generally do not see their interests being served by having their teachings challenged.

Christianity struggled and fought with science for a long time, and eventually reached a sort of understanding. Interestingly, I don't know that I've every seen that understanding codified anywhere -- it's just one of those things that gets passed around and taught informally. If there was a codification, it would satisfy my own sense of reason if it read somehting like: "A rational and just God created a universe with physical laws that are discoverable by man, and can be used to predict and influence future events. Such is the basis of free will. Without said laws, existence would be nihlistic and pointless. Honest attempts to discover God's laws can never be contrary to God's will as long as human beings have self-determination."

The physical laws of the universe are the ultimate proof against the claims of self-appointed elites. Because the laws are the same for everybody, and no one can do anything to change that. The universe is an equal-opportunity employer.

Cousin Dave at August 9, 2013 7:26 AM

Islamic scholars made valuable contributions to mathematics, algebra and "alchemy", the precursor to chemistry. Much to many a young schoolboy's dismay.

But that was back in the day when the emirs had the Crusades to give them something to do, instead of making sure the believers were as pure as the driven snow.

Since then? not so much.

I R A Darth Aggie at August 9, 2013 7:36 AM

Cousin Dave,
I believe the source you are looking for is St. Thomas Aquinas, who is the foremost theologian of the Catholic Church. He addressed those very issues as early the mid 1200's. Here is a link, unfortunately I am in a hurry this morning and have to rely on Wikipedia, scroll down to the section on epistemology. That is where they bottom line his thinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas

Sheep mommy at August 9, 2013 8:00 AM

Riiiiiiiiight, it was completely unforeseen on Dawkins part that this would kick up a storm that would lead to viral tweeting and a few news articles and discussion on TV. He was just stating facts in the most objective way possible.

Elle at August 9, 2013 8:56 AM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/08/dawkins-bashed.html#comment-3845290">comment from Elle

But they are facts. There are some Muslim scientists, but Islam itself fosters an anti-science perspective. Mohammed and the Quran are said to be science (based) and must be taken that way and not questioned.

Amy Alkon at August 9, 2013 9:16 AM

If you check out the list of Muslim laureates, you'll see that the one and only Muslim who won the Nobel in Physics was Abdus Salam (1979) from Pakistan. You'd think his countrymen would be proud of him, but he is an Ahmadi, a sect condemned as heretics and subjected to murderous persecution by orthodox Muslims. So in his native land he is an unperson - there are no memorials, no schools or anything else named after him, children are not taught anything about him, his grave has been desecrated, and his hometown where he is buried next to his parents has been renamed to erase him from history:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8744092.stm

Martin at August 9, 2013 9:16 AM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/08/dawkins-bashed.html#comment-3845299">comment from Amy Alkon

From the terrific site, thereligionofpeace.com:

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Myths-of-Islam.htm

The Myth:
Muslims often claim that their religion fostered a rich heritage of scientific discovery, “paving the way” for modern advances in technology and medicine. On this topic, they usually refer to the period between the 7th and 13th centuries, when Europe was experiencing its “Dark Ages” and the Muslim world was acquiring new populations and culture through violent conquest.

The Truth:

Although there is no arguing that the Muslim world was relatively more advanced during this period than the “Christian” world, the reasons for this have absolutely nothing to do with the Islamic religion (other than its mandate for military expansion). In fact, the religion tends to discourages knowledge outside of itself, which is why the most prolific Muslim scholars are usually students of religion rather than science.

[Note that the country of Spain alone translates more learning material and literature into Spanish each year than the entire Arab world has translated into Arabic since the 9th century. As the Saudi Grand Mufti bluntly put it in 2010, "The Quran with its stories and knowledge are sufficient for us... we don't need the Torah, or Gospels, or any other book].

The many fundamentalists and other devotees who dress as Muhammad did and adopt 7th century lifestyles to some degree or another underscore the importance of tradition in Islam. The religion is highly conservative and resistant to change, which is viewed with suspicion. As scholar Bernard Lewis points out, in Islam an innovation is presumed to be bad unless it can be proven to be good.

Beyond this, there are four basic reasons why Islam has little true claim to scientific achievement:

First, the Muslim world benefited greatly from the Greek sciences, which were translated for them by Christians and Jews. To their credit, Muslims did a better job of preserving Greek text than did the Europeans of the time, and this became the foundation for their own knowledge. (One large reason for this, however, was that access by Christians to this part of their world was cut off by Muslim slave ships and coastal raids that dominated the Mediterranean during this period).

Secondly, many of the scientific advances credited to Islam were actually “borrowed” from other cultures conquered by the Muslims. The algebraic concept of “zero”, for example, is erroneously attributed to Islam when, in fact, it was a Hindu discovery that was merely introduced to the West by Muslims.

In truth, conquered populations contributed greatly to the history of “Muslim science” until gradually being decimated by conversion to Islam (under the pressures of dhimmitude). The Muslim concentration within a population is proportional to the decline of scientific achievement. It is no accident that the Muslim world has had little to show for itself in the last 800 years or so, since running out of new civilizations to cannibalize.

Third, even accomplished Muslim scientists and cultural icons were often considered heretics in their day, sometimes with good reason. One of the greatest achievers to come out of the Muslim world was the Persian scientist and philosopher, al-Razi. His impressive works are often held up today as “proof” of Muslim accomplishment. But what the apologists often leave out is that al-Razi was denounced as a blasphemer, since he followed his own religious beliefs – which were in obvious contradiction to traditional Islam.

Fourth, even the contributions that are attributed to Islam (often inaccurately) are not terribly dramatic. There is the invention of certain words, such as alchemy and elixir (and assassin, by the way), but not much else that survives in modern technology which is of practical significance. Neither is there any reason to believe that such discoveries would not have easily been made by the West following the cultural awakening triggered by the Reformation.

As an example, consider that Muslims claim credit for "inventing" coffee - in the sense that they popularized an existing discovery by Africans who were caught up in the Arab slave trade. However, it is also true that the red dye used in many food products, from cranberry juice to candy, comes from the abdomen of a particular female beetle found in South America. It is extremely unlikely that the West would not have stumbled across coffee by now (although, to be fair, coffee probably expedited subsequent discoveries).

In fact, the litany of “Muslim” achievement often takes the form of rhapsody, in which the true origins of these discoveries are omitted - along with their comparative significance to Western achievement. One often doesn't hear about the dismal fate of original accomplishments either. Those who brag about the great observatory of Taqi al-Din in [freshly conquered] Istanbul, for example, often neglect to mention that it was quickly destroyed by the caliphate.

At the end of the day, the record of scientific, medical and technological accomplishment is not something over which Muslim apologists want to get into a contest with the Christian world. Today’s Islamic innovators are primarily known for turning Western technology, such as cell phones and airplanes, into instruments of mass murder.

To sum up, although the Islamic religion is not entirely hostile to science, neither should it be confused as a facilitator. The great achievements that are said to have come out of the Islamic world were made either by non-Muslims who happened to be under Islamic rule, or by heretics who usually had little interest in Islam. Scientific discovery tapers off dramatically as Islam asserts dominance, until it eventually peters out altogether.

Amy Alkon at August 9, 2013 9:22 AM

From "The Straight Dope" by the late Cecil Adams:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2454/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant

June 6, 2003

Dear Cecil:

I'll get right to the point. Why is the Islamic world so backward and ignorant? A thousand years ago, we hear, Arab culture put Europe in the shade, with great achievements in mathematics, astronomy, and architecture. Now it all seems to have boiled down to sadists and fanatics. I know this is a lot to explain in a column where they don't even let you jump to an inside page, Cecil, but give it a whiz: Where did our Muslim brothers go wrong?

— Bud Clarke

Last two paragraphs of Cecil's response:

.........By the 18th century it was clear that the Ottomans (and the Muslim world in general) were in decline. The Islamic response was to turn inward. Reformist Muslim sects argued for a return to tradition, and what had once been a tolerant religion grew more and more conservative and xenophobic. European colonization of Muslim lands in the 19th century increased resentment of the West, which in turn contributed to Muslim isolationism in the postcolonial era. By the time oil was discovered it was too late--Muslim (and particularly Arab) countries lacked the ability to exploit their own wealth and had to rely on Europeans to do it for them. Oil money enabled small elites to become Westernized, but despite a sharp increase in literacy in the past few decades, it's fair to say that in many countries the Islamic masses remain comparatively backward and ignorant.

All of which is an object lesson, I guess. What did our Muslim brothers do wrong? Nothing. They just stopped doing a lot of the stuff they'd gotten right, and the world passed them by.

— Cecil Adams

lenona at August 9, 2013 9:30 AM

"They did great things in the Middle Ages, though." - I wonder what they did in the middle ages. They probably did a lot of piracy near the arab coasts, did some trading, tried to conquer the whole world and convert everyone to Islam and passed of stuff from India as their own to Europeans and passed of European stuff as their own to India. If that is great, then so be it.

Redrajesh at August 10, 2013 7:52 PM

Today we are the poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy, the most un-enlightened, the most deprived, and the weakest of all the human race - President Musharraf

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1824455.stm

Stinky the Clown at August 11, 2013 9:01 AM

Buleihi: "When we review the names of Muslim philosophers and scholars whose contribution to the West is pointed out by Western writers, such as Ibn Rushd, Ibn Al-Haitham, Ibn Sina, Al-Farbi, Al-Razi, Al-Khwarizmi, and their likes, we find that all of them were disciples of the Greek culture and they were individuals who were outside the [Islamic] mainstream. They were and continue to be unrecognized in our culture. We even burned their books, harassed them, [and] warned against them, and we continue to look at them with suspicion and aversion. How can we then take pride in people from whom we kept our distance and whose thought we rejected?...

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3264.htm

Stinky the Clown at August 11, 2013 9:03 AM

Today we are the poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy, the most un-enlightened, the most deprived, and the weakest of all the human race

I think not. They are not poor since they get the lions share of wefare, illiteracy does not matter at all, backwardness again does not matter, unhealthy - I am not sure how, un-elightened - who cares about enlightenment, everyone does not want to be Jesus. Deprived - no way, they are the most entitled since they get everything for free, weakest - again no way, they are free to flout laws in many places, they are free to criticize and crib about other religions and discriminate against people who do not belong to their religion, but nobody is able to do the same to them, so they are the strongest actually.

Redrajesh at August 11, 2013 6:23 PM

Amy's nailed it. I highly recommend a book entitled The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins, who describes the growth and extinction of the early Christian communities in Africa, Asia and Asia Minor, and how they were overrun by Islam and their scientific and mathematic advances co-opted. The alleged advanced culture of medieval Islam is largely a Christian and ancient Greek/Roman culture that survived in the populations and managed not to be totally destroyed by Muslim rulers.

Grey Ghost at August 12, 2013 7:03 AM

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