Time Immortal

Guy links to, and distills, a list of notable Muslim inventions throughout history. What is telling, I think, is that most of the entries on the list all date back several hundred years:

Astrolabes: 9 inventions. The last one in the 12th century. Not 21, but 12!!!

Analog computers: 8 inventions, last one in the 15 century.

Globes: 3 inventions, last one in the 16 century.

Mural Instruments: 7 inventions, the last one is in the 11 or 12 century.

Other instruments: 6 inventions, the last one in the 11 century.

Aviation: 4 inventions, the last one in the 17 century. Two research projects were in the 20th century. Think about that one: of the tens of thousands of aviation research projects during the 20th century, they participated in only two and neither one is particularly notable.

Camera technology: 2 inventions, both many centuries ago.

Chemistry: 10 inventions, all during the 8 and 9 centuries.

Laboratory apparatus: 9 inventions, the last one in the 12th century.

Chemical industries: 21 inventions, the last one in the 9th century.

Industry: 27 inventions, the last one in the 12th century, except for shampoo in the 18th century.

Civil Engineering: 7 inventions, including one in the 16th century and, holy cow, one actually in the 20th century. We got one! Yes! There really IS an Islamic invention in the 20th century. Where’s the champaign?!

Clock technology: 16 inventions, including one in the 16th century and all the rest before the 12 century ended.

Industrial Milling: 14 inventions, all before the end of the 10th century.

Mechanical Technology: 18 inventions, and only one after the 12 century (it was in the 16 century).

Other Mechanical Devices: about 40, all invented centuries ago.

Medicine: 26 inventions, all centuries ago.

Military: 13 inventions, the last in the 16 century.

Navigation: 10 inventions (including such greats like “Mecca-centered map), the last one in the 17th century.

There are about a dozen other inventions listed, all of which are centuries ago.

Islam may be, as Shaukat Khawja (the blogger at RehmatPedia) assures us, “nothing but nature,”, but evidently that nothingness also applies to genuine intellectual and academic achievement. What technological sophistication seems to exist in predominantly Muslim nations is not the product of years or decades of intense, successful research as much as it is a demonstration of people rather parasitically living off of the academic capital of Western nations.

Chesterton, I think, was rather on to something when he remarked thusly: “Now a man preaching what he thinks is a platitude is far more intolerant than a man preaching what he admits is a paradox. It was exactly because it seemed self-evident, to Moslems as to Bolshevists, that their simple creed was suited to everybody, that they wished in that particular sweeping fashion to impose it on everybody. It was because Islam was broad that Moslems were narrow. And because it was not a hard Religion it was a heavy rule. Because it was without a self-correcting complexity, it allowed of those simple and masculine but mostly rather dangerous appetites that show themselves in a chieftain or a lord. As it had the simplest sort of religion, monotheism, so it had the simplest sort of government, monarchy. There was exactly the same direct spirit in its despotism as in its deism. The Code, the Common Law, the give and take of charters and chivalric vows, did not grow in that golden desert. The great sun was in the sky and the great Saladin was in his tent, and he must be obeyed unless he were assassinated. Those who complain of our creeds as elaborate often forget that the elaborate Western creeds have produced the elaborate Western constitutions; and that they are elaborate because they are emancipated.”

It is partly out of those same complicated creeds, I suspect, that the Western propensity for research and innovation have emerged — simple creeds cannot serve as the foundational basis for a society that contains a sufficient internal complexity so as to ensure that its people are able to prosper and thrive in a nation which values the rights of the individual — the individual is a complex thing, and to protect his or her rights is likewise complex.

God himself might be absurdly uncomplicated, but how humanity comprehends and effects its faith in God is not, or should not be (at its most fulfilling) similarly simple. Christianity understood this, which is why much of Christianity is predicated on the notion of divine mystery and contains within itself an inherent complexity that is, as Chesterton notes, self-correcting…just as surely as it is truly liberating, or at least sets up the necessary preconditions for liberty. And out of those nations which Christendom fostered and defended against the barbarities of Islam, many great technical innovations have erupted over the ages, even unto the modern age. It was not the people of the deserts that first allowed others to set foot on the vast lunar plains, nor was it the Bedouins made rich by oil who first flew through the air at speeds to boggle even the human ability to hear things as they happen.

Shaukat remarks thusly concerning the internal simplicity of Islam:

“Islamic Faith, on the other hand, is without mysteries and confusing philosophy. It pronounces that “There is no Deity except Allah, Muhammad is His servant and His last messenger, Holy Qur’an His final Word, and each human being would be judged by his/her good or bad deeds in this world after death”.

Humanity, in all these years, have been seeking answers to their problems and Islam have given them the same answers with any distortions or modifications - in order to attract more sheep. Islam has proved again and again that it’s not a fashion that it has to change with times - it can wait for the people seeking for truth and peace of mind.”

And yet, despite this internal simplicity, what hath Islam wrought? The majority of Muslim nations are not possessed of governments which extend the rights that every human being — man or woman — is due simply by virtue of being children of God. Especially in regard to women, many Muslim nations espouse views that are barbaric at worst, and backwards at best, which in many cases have not advanced beyond the 7th century. In terms of technical innovation and academic achievement, the wells of ingenuity in most Islamic nations seem to have run dry, with only a few sporadic (and then minor!) inventions and avenues of research emerging from those nations since the 16th century. Yes, in many of these nations, there is great wealth (thanks to the uneven distribution of oil in the world) and there is much technology — but the wealth came only by happenstance and the fortunes of geography, and the technology is all borrowed.

Islam may have a complete set of answers, as Shaukat asserts, but there is a difference between having answers and having the right answers. People who “have been seeking answers to their problems” can find answers on Oprah’s show as well, and those answers are also usually incorrect. Muhammad may have given a different set of incorrect answers, but at the end of the day the answers themselves are still incorrect.

Because if we are honest, as human beings, about what human nature entails, we understand that the human being does not thrive on those beliefs and philosophies which are internally simple. This is true in terms of political systems (which is why the best societies tend to be those which are democratic societies), of academic systems (which is why, for all their many flaws, the paradigm of schools and universities with many teachers tends to be preferable to the paradigm of a single instructor), and of religious systems as well (it should come as no surprise, then, that Christianity — the more complex — is what is ultimately true, while Islam — distorted and over-simplified — is false).

And a small part of the expression of that reality is the list which begins this posting: whereas Islamic nations has not developed much (if anything) significant since the 16th century (if not earlier!), Western nations, founded from Christendom, have constantly been on the bleeding edge of research and development for many centuries…and continue to be on that same bleeding edge even today.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!