The forsaken renaissance of Islam

The forsaken renaissance of Islam

Mahathir bin Mohamad, Project Syndicate

Children often play a game where they sit in a circle. One
whispers something to his neighbor, who then whispers that
information to the next child, and so on, around the circle. By
the time the last child whispers the information to the first, it
is totally different from what was originally said.

Something like that seems to have happened within Islam. The
Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, brought one-- and only one--
religion. Yet today we have perhaps a thousand religions that all
claim to be Islam.

Divided by their different interpretations, Muslims do not
play the role they once did in the world; instead, they are
weakened and victimized. The Shia/Sunni schism is so deep that
each side condemns followers of the other as apostates, kafir.
The belief that the others religion is not Islam, and its
followers not Muslim, has underpinned internecine wars in which
millions have died-- and continue to die.

Even among the Sunnis and Shias there are further divisions.
The Sunnis have four imams and the Shias have twelve; their
teachings all differ. Then there are other divisions, including
the Druze, the Alawites, and the Wahabis.

We are also taught by our ulemas (religious instructors) that
their teachings must not be questioned. Islam is a faith. It must
be believed. Logic and reason play no part in it. But what is it
that we must believe when each branch of Islam thinks the other
one is wrong? The Koran, after all, is one book, not two or
three, or a thousand.

According to the Koran, a Muslim is anyone who bears witness
that "there is no God (Allah) but Allah, and that Muhammad is his
Rasul (Messenger)". If no other qualification is added, then all
those who subscribe to these precepts must be regarded as
Muslims. But because we Muslims like to add qualifications that
often derive from sources other than the Koran, our religion's
unity has been broken.

But perhaps the greatest problem is the progressive isolation
of Islamic scholarship-- and much of Islamic life-- from the rest
of the modern world. We live in an age of science in which people
can see around corners, hear and see things happening in outer
space, and clone animals. And all of these things seem to
contradict our belief in the Koran.

This is so because those who interpret the Koran are learned
only in religion, in its laws and practices, and thus are usually
unable to understand today's scientific miracles. The fatwa
(legal opinions concerning Islamic law) that they issue appear
unreasonable and cannot be accepted by those with scientific
knowledge.

One learned religious teacher, for example, refused to believe
that a man had landed on the moon. Others assert that the world
was created 2,000 years ago. The age of the universe and its size
measured in light years-- these are things that the purely
religiously trained ulemas cannot comprehend.

This failure is largely responsible for the sad plight of so
many Muslims. Today's oppression, the killings and the
humiliations of Muslims, occurs because we are weak, unlike the
Muslims of the past. We can feel victimized and criticize the
oppressors, but to stop them we need to look at ourselves. We
must change for our own good. We cannot ask our detractors to
change, so that Muslims benefit.

So what do we need to do? In the past, Muslims were strong
because they were learned. Muhammad's injunction was to read, but
the Koran does not say what to read. Indeed, there was no "Muslim
scholarship" at the time, so to read meant to read whatever was
available. The early Muslims read the works of the great Greek
scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers. They also studied
the works of the Persians, the Indians, and the Chinese.

The result was a flowering of science and mathematics. Muslim
scholars added to the body of knowledge and developed new
disciplines, such as astronomy, geography, and new branches of
mathematics. They introduced numerals, enabling simple and
limitless calculations.

But around the fifteenth century, the learned in Islam began
to curb scientific study. They began to study religion alone,
insisting that only those who study religion-- particularly
Islamic jurisprudence-- gain merit in the afterlife. The result
was intellectual regression at the very moment that Europe began
embracing scientific and mathematical knowledge.

And so, as Muslims were intellectually regressing, Europeans
began their renaissance, developing improved ways of meeting
their needs, including the manufacture of weapons that eventually
allowed them to dominate the world.

By contrast, Muslims fatally weakened their ability to defend
themselves by neglecting, even rejecting, the study of allegedly
secular science and mathematics, and this myopia remains a
fundamental source of the oppression suffered by Muslims today.
Many Muslims still condemn the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa
Kamal, because he tried to modernize his country. But would
Turkey be Muslim today without Ataturk? Mustafa Kamal's clear-
sightedness saved Islam in Turkey and saved Turkey for Islam.

Failure to understand and interpret the true and fundamental
message of the Koran has brought only misfortune to Muslims. By
limiting our reading to religious works and neglecting modern
science, we destroyed Islamic civilization and lost our way in
the world.

The Koran says that "Allah will not change our unfortunate
situation unless we make the effort to change it". Many Muslims
continue to ignore this and, instead, merely pray to Allah to
save us, to bring back our lost glory. But the Koran is not a
talisman to be hung around the neck for protection against evil.
Allah helps those who improve their minds.

The writer was Prime Minister of Malaysia during 1981-2003.