I*SLA*M 2.

When Muhammed died in 632 he could look back on a life of remarkable achievement.  Orphaned early in life and without an education, he had united the disparate factions and squabbling tribes of Arabia into a semblance of religious and political unity.  He had imposed on his compatriots a revolutionary faith that claimed to be the the final prophetic revelation of Allah.  They accepted him as the supreme prophet and apostle and the Koran as the infallible and authoritative word of God.  He was very far from being the simple impostor that earlier European historians described.  He was obviously a very remarkable man, skilful in diplomacy, engaging in social life, but all the while having a streak of ruthlessness when necessary.  This was shown in the destruction of 800 males of the Jewish Quraysh tribe after the Battle of the Trench outside Medina.


After his death there occurred the most amazing example of military expansion the world has ever seen, one that rivals that of Alexander, but with the added bonus of permanence.  Within two years of his death, Damascus had been taken by the Arabs, Jerusalem a few years later, and the  whole of Egypt by 642.  By 711 the Muslim empire stretched from  Spain in the West to Afghanistan in the East.  With the sole exception of Spain, the lands conquered at that time remain Muslims lands to this day.  How  were all these victories achieved?  These are the main reasons.  The Muslim armies were fired by a zeal that they were inspired by Allah to bring salvation to a benighted race. Secondly, the two major powers in the prosperous lands to the north of Arabia had been squabbling and fighting for years.  Both the Byzantines and the Persians had reached a point of exhaustion.  Thirdly, the Semitic Christians in Syria and Palestine were sick of the corrupt and oppressive Greek-speaking rulers in Constantinople. They thought that Muslim rule would probably be milder and fairer than what they were experiencing.


In 732 Muslim armies based in Spain crossed the Pyrenees and advance towards Paris. At Tours one of the most important of world battles took place.  Charles the Hammer of France defeated the Muslim armies and they retreated back to Spain.


The next few centuries are fondly looked upon by most Muslims as their Golden Age.  They translated and meditated on the Greek classics and in the royal courts Muslim and Jewish  and Christian scholars studied and discussed basic problems in science and mathematics.  As one contemporary Muslim scientist writes,  "Between the the 9th and the 13th centuries the only people doing decent work in science, philosophy, or medicine were Muslims."
Then, in the early 12th century,  a book was published by a very learned Sufi scholar that has had a deep influence on I*slam.  Al Ghazzali, concerned that the writings of Plato and Aristotle were far too popular and there was a consequent decline of faith among Muslims as a result, published his book, The Incoherence of the Philosophers.  In it he strove to highlight the contradictions found in Greek philosophers.  In it he championed revelation over reason and predestination over free-will.  One of his doctrines was what is known as occasionalism.  It is an attack on the basic assumption of all science- the concept of cause and effect.  For example, take petrol, fire and oxygen.  Moderns believe that if you put these three together you will get an explosive reaction without exception.  The known properties of the three items mentioned makes an explosion inevitable. Ghazzali said that God directly intervenes in all the observable cases because it is His will, not because of the intrinsic certainties involved. Most say you cannot have a science based on the momentary arbitrary will of something external to matter.  A lot of Muslim intellectuals believe that it is from this period that Muslim science declined.  While the West pursued Scientific enquiry at an ever increasing rate the Muslim world retreated back in a rigid orthodoxy that has continued to this day.
In the terrase cafes of Cairo, among the intellectuals who meet there, one of the perennial topics of conversation is the backwardness of Arab and Muslim states in general. They admit that Islamic nations are scientifically and economically far behind Western nations. One Pakistani physicist has done a survey on scientific papers published in the past few years.  Less than 2% are produced in the whole of the Muslim world,  a figure which is a slightly lower  than that of Spain.
There are more books and scientific papers published in Israel than in the whole of the surrounding Arab states put together.  Muslim scientists are eternally wary of offending the current religious orthodoxy. The spirit of free enquiry is stifled.