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Westerners are shocked and frightened by the violent and seemingly inexplicable behavior coming out of the Middle East. In The Closing of the Muslim Mind, foreign policy expert Robert R. Reilly explains how a pivotal battle waged nearly a millennium ago over the role of reason is at the heart of contemporary Islamic social and political problems. When Muslims were exposed to Greek thought in the 7th and 8th centuries, they began to debate whether reason could appropriately address God’s revelation. The traditionalists eventually prevailed, leaving as their legacy a deformed theology that was opposed to scientific inquiry. Traditionalists said that because Allah is pure will, unbound by the constraints of reason, he does not act rationally. It follows that his creation would not follow natural laws of cause and effect, but only bend to Allah’s will: an apple does not fall from a tree as a result of the force of gravity, but because Allah wills it. If the objective of science is to discover nature’s laws, the teaching that no such laws exist obviously curtails that pursuit. As a result, no major invention or discovery has emerged from the Muslim world for more than seven centuries. The civilization that made major scientific contributions in the ninth to thirteenth centuries is now near the bottom of almost every category of human development– health, education, per capita GDP, and productivity. The perceived lack of cause and effect also plays out in daily affairs. Military personnel involved in training Middle Eastern forces report a lacksidasical attitude to weapon maintenance and sharp shooting. Human agency and skills are viewed as inconsequential; if Allah wants the bullet to hit the target it will, if not it will miss. Even the use of car seatbelts is considered presumptuous; if Allah decides it is your time to die then a seatbelt is useless, if he decides you will live, it is unnecessary. Reilly also explains how theology informs politics: "If God is pure will, how ought his vice-regents on earth behave and rule? It is no accident that the embraced view of a tyrannical god produces tyrannical political orders." Where reason is rejected, there is only violence and power left to persuade. Additionally, the foundations needed for democracy are not present in Islam. If man is not considered capable of rational, moral choices, how can he govern himself? Politicians and policy makers set on nation building should take heed: If Reilly is correct, the Middle East is poor and violent "because of a dysfunctional culture based upon a deformed theology. Unless it can be reformed at that level, economic engineering or the development of constitutional political order will not succeed." (ISI, 2010, 234 pp., $27) |
The theological school influenced by the Greeks posited that God endowed man with reason so man could know God and his moral order; reason was therefore central to man’s relationship with God. In contrast, the traditionalist school argued that revelation must be accepted without questioning. Man is unable to determine what is right or wrong, in part because actions have no inherently moral qualities. Actions are good or evil only because Allah deems them so, and he may well change his mind.
