Aaron Mannes in Policy Review: Tribalism, Islamism & Women

The October-November issue of Policy Review published an article I wrote reviewing a pair of impressive books: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror by Nonie Darwish.

They are a pair of impressive books which shed important light not only on the nature of radical Islam, but also the way it along with tribalism pervade the societies of the greater Middle East and stifle freedom for women, but also for men.

My review is below.

Policy Review
October & November 2007, No. 145

BOOKS: Infidel Tales

by AARON MANNES

From sources as diverse as Bernard Lewis and the un’s Arab Human Development Report we hear the argument that improving the status of women is essential to reform in the Muslim world. But understanding what this entails demands more than statistics about female literacy rates. The memoirs of two exceptional women, born into very different circumstances in the Muslim world, provide a glimpse into the scale of this problem. Chief among the many virtues of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Nonie Darwish’s Now They Call Me Infidel, is that they show the cruelty and banal petty oppression that encircles Muslim women.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has become a figure on the international stage and an outspoken critic of radical Islam. In Infidel she tells the dramatic, almost unbelievable, story of her life so far. She was born into a prominent Somali clan, the daughter of a leader in the opposition to Somali dictator Siad Barre and something of a modernizer. Her father instructed that his family break with tradition and not excise the genitals of his daughters. While he was imprisoned his children were in the care of their maternal grandmother, who arranged the procedure. The Islam practiced by the Somalis was relaxed and combined with local traditions, but it remained central to the Somali identity. When political pressure forced the family to leave Somalia, Hirsi Ali’s mother refused at first to go to Ethiopia, both because it was Somalia’s longstanding enemy and because it was a predominantly Christian country. Instead they relocated to Saudi Arabia, where Hirsi Ali endured the difficulties of functioning in a country where women are not permitted out of the home without a male escort. They then moved briefly to Ethiopia, where she saw, first-hand, the impact of clan loyalties on the Somali opposition. Hirsi Ali’s mother, unhappy with barracks life, eventually took her three children to Nairobi, where the family survived on aid from wealthier Somali exiles.

Hirsi Ali grew to adulthood in Nairobi, where she was educated at a Western school and swept up in the rising Islamist tide. As a teenager she was an adherent of the rapidly expanding Muslim Brotherhood. She wore a hijab and attended prayers. But she could not reconcile the internal contradictions of the Muslim Brotherhood’s interpretation of Islam, particularly the inequality between men and women and the vilification of the West and non-Muslims. At the same time, she was going to films, reading English literature and Harlequin romance novels, and even dating surreptitiously. Her friends began to enter arranged marriages. Their descriptions of married life, particularly the passionless sex, horrified her. She put off her own suitors, but her father, though in many ways a liberal modernizer, had three wives himself and ignored his daughter’s objections to an arranged marriage with a prominent clan member. Her prospective husband was in Canada, and in 1992 Hirsi Ali was sent to live with relatives in Germany while she waited for a Canadian visa. Stunned by the order and cleanliness of the West, she also found herself quite able to navigate it. She began plotting her escape: She traveled to the Netherlands under the guise of visiting a family member, hoping to make her way to England. On learning of the lax asylum standards in the Netherlands, she decided to stay there instead. She was accepted as a refugee under false pretenses, having claimed that she was fleeing from Somalia’s civil war and given a false name and birth date.

If the book had ended with Hirsi Ali’s building a new life in the Netherlands, it would have been a fitting end to an amazing story. But the story does not end there. Seeking to discover why some places had governments that worked well and others did not, she obtained a university degree in politics. She also worked as a translator for Dutch police and social services agencies with Somali immigrants, and here she saw the ills of her native society — particularly the abuse of women — being imported into her adopted country. She was disturbed to find the Dutch acquiescing to immigrant demands to establish enclaves, rather than assimilating the immigrants into Dutch society.

Hirsi Ali entered politics as a researcher with a think tank. In the wake of 9/11, as Dutch elites insisted that terrorism was an aberration from Islam, Hirsi Ali argued the opposite — that Islam justified terrorism. As her criticisms of Islam became more pointed, Dutch elites recoiled from her message and Muslims began threatening her life; but she had touched a popular chord. She was elected to the Dutch parliament, where she pressed for Dutch police to track honor killings. With Theo Van Gogh she made the short film, Submission, about the treatment of women under Islam, which scandalized Muslims. In November 2004, Van Gogh was stabbed to death in broad daylight by a young Muslim. Dutch authorities, unprepared for this kind of terrorist threat, whisked Hirsi Ali out of the country and kept her confined under harsh and occasionally surreal conditions in rural locations in the United States and Germany. At the same time, as part of a political power play, there was an effort to strip her of her Dutch citizenship based on the false information she had provided when applying for asylum. Ultimately, seeking time to write and think, and finding the security requirements and constant moving in the Netherlands too onerous, Hirsi Ali resigned from the Dutch parliament and accepted a position at the American Enterprise Institute.

This bare summary does no justice Hirsi Ali’s page-turning memoir. From her harrowing description of her excision, to the details of life in Saudi Arabia, where little boys can turn off their mothers’ television programs, Hirsi Ali’s book illustrates the world of her origin, the values and principles that drive it, and the astounding level of violence that permeates it. Her wide-eyed descriptions of her first encounters with Western life are touching: police who are courteous and helpful, a religion that emphasizes dialogue and love rather than fear and submission, and marriages that are entered voluntarily and consist of two equal partners.

The life of Nonie Darwish, as she chronicles it in Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror, lacks the drama of Hirsi Ali’s experience, though there are many parallels. Darwish’s father was a highly regarded Egyptian military officer who was killed in Gaza by the Israelis just before the 1956 Suez War. (She describes growing up singing songs praising martyrdom in the battle with Israel as the state-controlled press churned out anti-Semitic diatribes.) Born into Egypt’s elite, Darwish was not directly touched by the worst aspects of the oppression of women, but she was not unaware of it. Honor killings were a regular theme in Egyptian literature and cinema, and the family’s maids told terrible stories of being raped by previous employers. A raped woman is considered to have dishonored the family; the only way for the family to restore its honor is to kill her. Darwish’s widowed mother could not remarry — it would have been dishonoring the memory of the shahid (martyr). At the same time, not having a male head of the household left the family vulnerable to rumor. The outgoing Darwish was warned by her mother to watch her behavior; otherwise the family might be suspected of improprieties. Dating and normal mixing between the sexes was simply impossible for young Egyptians, and marriages were arranged. Darwish relates the poignant sight of her mother walking, fully clothed, along the shoreline during beach vacations. Her mother joked about being young again and donning a bathing suit and swimming, but actually doing so would have been scandalous.

What is remarkable about Darwish’s narrative is that by the 1950s Egypt had been attempting to modernize for nearly a century and a half, and Nasser, who crushed the Muslim Brotherhood, was supposedly a great progressive figure. Yet, even at the very apex of Egypt’s secular elite society, the heavy hand of tradition trapped women. At the same time, while few Egyptians were devout, no one would criticize Islam. Darwish gives a sense of the extent to which Islam and tribal traditions saturate Muslim societies with most of the region’s ostensibly secular political movements and politicians, including Fatah, the Baath Party, and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, emerging from this milieu.

Like Hirsi Ali, Darwish possessed an innate sense that allowed her to see through her society’s shibboleths. As a young woman she found Egyptian bravado prior to the Six Day War unbelievable and was unsurprised when Nasser’s adventure ended in a tragic defeat. And she realized early that she needed to leave Egypt, though her exodus in 1978 was more prosaic: She followed her Copt boyfriend, who had family in Los Angeles, to the United States. She was impressed by the general order and cleanliness she found there, and equally so in the message of love and tolerance she heard in Christianity. Still, like Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands, Darwish found that the Middle East had followed her to the West. Not a regular mosque-goer, when she did attend she was surprised by the vitriol and dogmatism. She noticed more and more Muslim women at malls and on campuses in full hijab.

On a visit to Egypt more than two decades later, Darwish was shocked by the poverty and anger (particularly at the United States), and the growing religious extremism. She was grateful when her plane landed in Los Angeles. It was September 10, 2001.

She was doubly shocked when the responses of her friends and relatives in Egypt vacillated between denying that Arabs had perpetrated 9/11 and assertions that the United States had had it coming. She began writing and speaking, trying to warn Americans of the nature of the terrorist threat and providing a different Arab perspective. She was even moved to defend Israel, and came to understand that it was Nasser and the mad ideologies that dominated the Muslim world that took her father’s life, not Israel.

While Hirsi Ali hews closely to her life story, Darwish addresses the broader impact of the traditions and restrictions that bind Muslim women. She explains how the tradition of polygamy reduces the status of Muslim women, by making husbands masters over their wives. A husband can easily, under the law, take a second wife if his first one displeases him, and she will have no legal recourse. This creates unhealthy alliances between mothers and sons, as mothers rely on their sons to protect them and advance their fortunes. Darwish points out that Arab men also suffer under this system. They are deprived of the joys and emotional depth of the voluntary monogamous marriage, which has been a cornerstone of western civilization. Of course, many Muslim couples love each other and remain monogamous, but this is not a central value of many of the societies of the greater Middle East.

Many of the worst customs prevailing in the Muslim world (honor killings, female genital mutilation, polygamy), as well as the general practice of restricting the sphere of activity of women, existed before Islam and are characteristics of tribalism. Although this social structure evolved as a response to the requirements of desert life, aspects of it have remained strong and it continues to define settled life in towns and rural areas throughout the greater Middle East and parts of Africa. The overwhelming centrality of extended family in daily life defines politics and has stifled the growth of civil society and entrepreneurial commerce. Hirsi Ali describes her relief at life in the Netherlands, where clan affiliation does not matter.

Westernized Muslims may reach into Muslim tradition and craft a modern Islam that is in accord with liberal democratic values. Alternately, tribal societies may develop mechanisms to change in the face of modernity. But Islam fused with tribalism creates an all-encompassing worldview and provides a theological framework reinforcing ancient customs. Islam permits, but does not require, female circumcision. Nevertheless, in communities where it is prevalent, most people, including local religious authorities, believe the procedure is required. This presumed fusion of Islam and tribalism was exemplified during a parliamentary debate in Jordan over establishing harsher sentences for men who killed female relatives who had violated family honor, when one Senator argued, “whether we like it or not, women are not equal to men in Islam. Adulterous women are much worse than adulterous men because women determine the lineage.”

In What Went Wrong Bernard Lewis writes that when buying Western weapons was insufficient to reverse Middle Eastern military decline, Middle Eastern nations adopted Western uniforms and martial music. But the systems and principles underpinning Western success were not imported. Women’s rights may follow a similar path. Some Muslim nations may be adopting reforms on behalf of women’s rights, but without changing the underlying value system. Egypt has made strides against female genital mutilation, and polygamy has been outlawed in several Muslim nations and is being redefined as socially unacceptable in others. Some states, responding to international pressure against them over egregious acts against women in the name of family honor, have begun to take steps against honor killings. These reforms, welcome though they are, are enacted under Western pressure and to maintain a veneer of modernity. It is not clear that the underlying principles of equality and personal liberty are also being adopted. Efforts to expand women’s education in the Muslim world appear more promising, although considering the generally poor quality of education in the region this initiative may also have a limited impact.

Muslim societies, trapped between religion and culture, have changed only slowly over centuries. But the lives of Darwish and Hirsi Ali offer a few possibilities for change. Both women were educated at Western schools, giving them the skills, particularly fluency in English, they needed to fend for themselves in a modern society. Darwish worked for a U.S. company, helping her achieve a certain measure of financial independence. Improving the educational and economic opportunities open to women, along with the attendant legal reforms, would give women greater autonomy. But the economies of the greater Middle East have been essentially stagnant for decades, and deeper changes will be necessary.

Other possibilities lie in the realm of ideas. Western literature and films, and even romance novels, inspired both women. These stories fostered a longing for romance and planted the seeds of individualism. In discussing reform, Hirsi Ali claims that Islam needs a Voltaire, and Darwish observes that creating the freedom to leave Islam is essential — only then, she says, will Islam be forced to compete equally for adherents. Today an individual who openly leaves Islam is an apostate and, as Hirsi Ali can attest, marked for death.

Fostering reform in the Muslim world is the great challenge of this century. But it is a challenge that cannot be evaded. Both Darwish and Hirsi Ali give warning that radical Islam is on the rise within the West itself and that immigrant communities are bringing tribal social structures with them. But their books are more than jeremiads. They are both also love stories of a sort: Two impressive, able women from backgrounds that squelched their talents came to the West and fell in love with the values espoused by Western societies and the opportunities and freedoms they provide. This message is also vital. If the West is to aid efforts to reform the Muslim world, it will need to believe in itself first. Darwish and Hirsi Ali provide a timely reminder, from people intimately familiar with the alternative, that Western societies and liberal democratic values are good and worth defending.

Aaron Mannes (www.aaronmannes.com), author of Profiles in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations (Rowman & Littlefield 2004), is a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Laboratory of Computational Cultural Dynamics and a doctoral student at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.

Competing Narratives: The Women of the FARC

Latin America’s most deadly terrorist organization, the FARC, cultivates an image of romance and revolution. To emphasize their revolutionary egalitarianism they highlight the importance of women in the ranks. Approximately a quarter to a third of the FARC fighters are women, and pictures on the FARC’s website nearly always include a few FARCettes. Sympathetic journalists have gushed over the guerilleras and the FARC’s own descriptions of FARC life verge on pornography (I’ve excerpted examples of both below). The reality is of course quite different (see this excerpt from a report by Human Rights Watch.) A recent dramatic demonstration of this unreality came when a FARCette named Angelica hijacked a plane in order to escape her life with FARC and surrender to Colombia authorities.

Nonetheless, FARC propaganda works and occasionally attracts international recruits such as Tanja Nijmieijer, a young Dutch woman who, filled with revolutionary fervor joined the FARC. Portions of her diary were found when Colombian forces raided a FARC camp in August. The picture is not pretty, not frightening, more banal. But a far cry from the egalitarian image the FARC seeks to project. Based on Tanja's description, it is a movement of petty tyrants.

Terrorist groups need to be defeated by arms, but also in battle. Destroying the FARC’s progressive image and splitting it from its connections with the international left is a key component in neutralizing it overall and perhaps bringing some peace to Colombia.

Compare and contrast, excerpts below:

Here is a fawning piece in which life with the FARC is portrayed as an Outward Bound personal growth experience:

…there was little doubt that the guerrillas in that particular camp had achieved an impressive degree of gender equality. It was not just evident in their activities and words but, more importantly, in their way of being.

…The softness of the energy exhibited by the male rebels towards their female colleagues, their absolute lack of machismo, their acceptance of them as equals, was actually quite astounding. And for the women, they also exhibited many feminine qualities for a group of females living a traditionally male lifestyle. In fact, maintaining their femininity was important to the female guerrillas. During off-duty hours we often observed female rebels getting together to apply make-up or to braid each other’s hair. Evidently, equality in that FARC camp was not about women acting like men.

This innocence hardly compares with FARC’s own writing about the FARCettes. LOVE BENEATH THE INTIMACY OF THE MOSQUITO NETTING, which reads like a bad undergrad imitation of Gabriel Garcia Maquez style magical realism, is no longer on the FARC’s website, but can be read in its entirety here:

To form a couple they talk to the commander: "We want to be partners." The commander calls them both in and explains: "you have to behave in such-a-such way, respect each other, be with this person only, not with one and then another because if there is not respect, they don't let them be together and they separate them..." Sonia expanded her observation….

"There are no marriages here, there are loving Associations," stated Diana. There are very intense relationships. The intimacy of any relationship follows: they join their tents and their beds. Intimacy is born beneath the intensity of the mosquito net, the neighboring tent doesn't matter. Cries are stifled, you learn how to stifle the passionate outburst of orgasm in complete silence, in the silence of mingled sweat and the pleasure that invites blissful sleep, intertwined. "The couple shares the same tent and you get used to intimacy with other tents close by. It is not like intimacy in civilian life. For example, there are also places where they are in general quarters, so you sleep in one bed on one big frame or blanket. Sometimes they put a couple beside you, or a single compañero/a, and then you could say that privacy is the mosquito net. This is intimacy in the guerrilla." said Eliana.

Commander Sonia, long my favorite FARCette, is now serving a 16 year sentence for conspiring to produce and import cocaine.




Here, for a different perspective are some excerpts from Ms. Nijmieijer’s diary. One of these three things doesn’t belong (but which one is closest to the true):

21 July 2006: …I almost forgot the big news: two comrades have AIDS, and there may be more. No one here uses contraceptives. The girlfriend of one of them has no idea what it means. She told me the news with a big grin and her boyfriend seems totally unconcerned. Another girl, who used to have a relationship with the man, is really worried.

24 November 2006: I'm tired, tired of the FARC, tired of people and tired of living in this commune. I'm fed up of never having anything of my own. All of this would have a purpose if you knew what you were fighting for. I don't believe in it any more. What sort of rebel movement is this? Only a few people have money or cigarettes or sweets and the rest of us have to beg for a share, but you know the higher-ups will just be nasty and say no. It was exactly the same four years ago when I joined, nothing has changed. A girl with big tits and a pretty face can totally undermine a unit that has worked together for ages (...) I don't know if I'll ever get out of this jungle (...) I want to get out of here, at least out this unit. But you know that you're a sort of prisoner here (...) It's not the FARC so much as this unit.(...) but had enough of all that blah blah blah about being a Communist (...)

(No date): Dear Jans, there's a party today. But of course the commandants and their women have had their own private party. It's so corrupt. And now all the lower ranks are allowed to drink whatever the head honchos couldn't manage to pour down their throats yesterday (...) Yesterday that idiot Margaret offered me some sweets. That bitch had a great big bag of sweets. I felt so humiliated. A woman who is with one of the commandants is in a totally different class. They have privileges and they give orders. But they also have to produce children.

Aaron Mannes in Jane's on Science in the Muslim World

Last spring, Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst ran this article I wrote on science in the Muslim world, looking at the reasons why a society that was once at the pinnacle of scientific achievement now lags behind even other under-developed countries in conducting research. (Jane's is a British publication so some of the language follows their style, not my Americanisms.)


JANE'S ISLAMIC AFFAIRS ANALYST - MARCH 01, 2007

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Science in Islamic societies

At its intellectual peak, Islamic civilization was the world's most sophisticated and scientifically advanced.

In modern times, Muslim countries have suffered a deficit in scientific research and development, in comparison to non-Muslim states.

Two obstacles to development in this field are a lack of funding from governments and a determinist worldview, whereby life is guided by religious, not scientific principles.


Although science flourished during Islam's Golden Age (850CE to 1250CE), the current level of scientific research in the Muslim world is very low. Competing in the modern world requires mastery not only of technology, but also of scientific principles. While there are many structural and institutional barriers to scientific development in the Muslim world, the greatest obstacles may be cultural.

Viewed from nearly every perspective, the state of scientific research in the Muslim world looks bleak. The key indicators of the level of research in a country are its per capita publication of science and engineering articles. By this and most other indices, Muslim nations rank behind other comparable states. According to the National Science Foundation, between 2000 and 2003 the world average publication of science and engineering articles per million inhabitants was 137; the nations belonging to the Organisation of Islamic Conferences have an average of just 13.

While the limited scientific achievements of impoverished African Muslim countries are less surprising, oil rich middle-income Muslim states rarely conduct as much scientific research as comparable non-Muslim nations, with a few exceptions. The Middle East's traditional leaders in this field, Egypt (described by the World Bank as a lower-middle income economy) and Saudi Arabia both produce about 25 articles per million inhabitants. Brazil, also a lower-middle income economy, produces 45 articles per million inhabitants. Malaysia, although home to a high-tech economy, publishes less than 21 articles per million inhabitants, higher than China (which produces 19 papers per inhabitant).

Pakistan, a low-income country and home to the 1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Abdus Salam, as well as the only Muslim country to develop a nuclear weapon, has been a leader in scientific achievement in the Muslim world. Yet, it produces less than three scientific articles per million people, whereas its similarly situated rival India produces over 11.

Even more crucial than raw production of articles is how frequently the articles are cited, which shows their importance to international science. Judged by this measure, most Muslim states have a marginal role in international science. In 2003, science and engineering articles produced by the Arab world were cited 12,182 times, representing 0.28 per cent of the world's total. Articles from Brazil alone were cited approximately twice as often. Articles from Pakistan represented 0.02 per cent of international citations, compared to India, which accounts for 0.73 per cent.

The cause of this low level of scientific achievement is under-investment in research and development throughout the Muslim world. According to World Bank figures, with a few exceptions, Muslim countries invest less in research and development than non-Muslim countries with similar income levels. Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia spent only 0.2 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on research and development. The international average for high-income countries is ten times that level, but between 1997 and 2002 Pakistan's rival India, also a low-income country, spent over 0.7 per cent of its GDP on research and development. Non-Muslim middle-income states usually invest an average of nearly one per cent of GDP on research.

The reasons for this lack of investment in research and development are linked to the broader malaise facing much of the Muslim world. Muslim states top the indices of the most corrupt and least free nations. This means that the application of resources is at the discretion of a small ruling elite. Governments across the region have chosen not to focus o scientific research. Particularly in the Middle East and in Pakistan, governments have chosen to spend disproportionately on armaments, at the expense of scientific research.

In addition to problematic policies, the government and social systems are not conducive to scientific research. Endemic corruption means resources that are applied to research needs are not well spent. The education systems in most of the Muslim world are low quality and do not prepare students for university-level scientific study.

In most countries, substantial research and development is conducted in the private sector that operates in parallel to, and is sustained by, dynamic civil societies. However, these sectors are weak throughout the Islamic world. Inadequate bureaucracies and legal frameworks hamper the functioning of large institutions, particularly universities and corporations, essential for productive scientific research. In much of the Muslim world, the business sector is formally (through direct ownership) or informally (through ties among the elites) linked with the government and consequently their actions reflect the government's priorities.

Scientific associations reflect the general weakness of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the Muslim world and are narrowly focused and poorly funded. Finally, modern science is an international affair, but there are minimal systematic exchanges of ideas between scientists both within the Muslim world and with the international scientific community as a whole, very often because of inter-state rivalries.

These failings have not been limited to Islamist regimes such as Saudi Arabia. Ostensibly secular regimes have allowed research and development to stagnate. Some countries, particularly secular Baathist-ruled Syria, have persecuted their scientific communities. At the same time, very few Muslim regimes are opposed to technology. Enormous sums have been spent by wealthy and impoverished Muslim regimes on technology transfers from the West. These turn-key projects, in which the technology is operated but not truly mastered, have been detrimental to developing local capabilities.

Radical Islamists are also comfortable with technology. Substantial numbers of engineers have been recruited by Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations, including 11 September 2001 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his nephew, 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood is sometimes lightheartedly referred to as the Al-ikwhan al-muhandisun (Engineer Brothers).

An insight into this paradox can be seen in the efforts, particularly in Pakistan, to develop Islamic science. Prominent Pakistani scientists claim that the principles of science can be gleaned from the Quran. While these scientists readily embrace technology and have demonstrated substantial technical competence, seeking explanations from the Quran rather than through experimentation does little to develop the necessary scientific base. This situation encapsulates the position of science in the Muslim world. It is seen as a strictly instrumental means of achieving certain goals, but not as a means of understanding the world. However, without the study of scientific principles and the attendant pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, science stagnates.

These attitudes are in stark contrast with the ideals of Islam's Golden Age. During its intellectual peak, Islamic civilization was the world's most sophisticated and highly conducive to scientific inquiry. Muslim civilization built on a rich heritage of ancient knowledge of the Greeks, which Arab scholars translated and commented on. The Middle East-based Muslim civilizations absorbed learning from other centres worldwide, most notably India and China. This project of preservation and combination was substantial in its own right (later Western advances would have been impossible without the groundwork laid during this time), but the great scholars of this period also engaged in research, making discoveries in numerous fields including chemistry, mathematics, astronomy and medicine. Among the outstanding achievements of this period were the development of algebra, the beginnings of analytic geometry and important advances in trigonometry. In astronomy, Muslim scientists improved upon the work of the ancients and developed star maps that were used worldwide for centuries.

This Golden Age stagnated. Although Muslim civilization recovered, science did not. The Ottoman Empire rose to become one of the great powers of the world, its armies ranging deep into Europe. However, Ottoman attitudes towards science paralleled those of modern Muslim states. Heavily centralised, with little in the way of civil society, research was entirely dependent on the discretion of the Sultan. The Sultans generally preferred to purchase Western devices and import Western technicians than to finance their own.

One factor in the stagnation of Muslim science could be in the realm of philosophy and theology. Like the other monotheistic religions, Islam wrestles with the conflict between free will and determinism. An all-powerful deity reduces the scope for human initiative and reason. Muslim philosophers adopted Aristotelian philosophy and posited a universe set in motion by a radical deity and governed by laws that could be grasped by human reason.

The great Muslim philosophers such as Al-Farabi (d. 950), Avicenna (980-1037), and Averroes (1126-1198), had a profound impact on Western philosophy and ultimately this worldview entered into a creative tension with determinism in the West. In the Muslim world, however, this worldview was marginalised. The greatest anti-philosopher Al-Ghazali (1059-1111) argued for revelation over reason and that a universe governed by physical laws placed unacceptable limits on divine power.

Al-Ghazali and later thinkers posited a universe continually recreated at the deity's discretion. Although Ghazali later inspired radical theoreticians such as Ibn Taymiya (1263-1328) and Ibn Wahhab (1703-1791) who argued for purifying Islam through strict adherence to the precepts of early Islam, it would be simplistic to characterise the Muslim world as simply being gripped by radical orthodoxy.

The Ottomans offered, by the standards of the time, minority protection and opportunities for advancement to all inhabitants of the empire. For centuries there was a greater flow of dissidents from Europe to the Ottoman Empire than vice versa. A more determinist worldview also had advantages for maintaining social harmony and avoiding political disruptions. For individuals, the determinist worldview that many tragedies are out of an individual's hands can be a great source of comfort and is central to Islam's appeal to hundreds of millions of people.

However, this view reduces the scope of human endeavor and curiosity. If phenomena occur according to divine whim, then there is less incentive for studying how phenomena occur. This dearth of curiosity in the Muslim world extended to areas outside of science. The 2002 Arab Human Development Report notes that the entire Arab world translates 330 books annually, one-fifth the number translated in Greece alone.

Further, the report notes that in the past millennia the Arab world has translated as many books (about 100,000) as Spain translates in a single year. This curiosity deficit extends into history. Even Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), one of the last great Muslim scholars, writing about a reported revival of philosophy in Europe, wrote dismissively: "But God knows what goes on over there!" Over the next few centuries there was minimal Middle Eastern exploration of Europe, while Europeans traveled
to the Middle East, studied the languages and translated the literature and established university departments to study the region.

There are a few exceptions to the overall weak state of science in the Muslim world. Turkey, which in per capita production of scientific papers and rates of international citation compares favourably to similarly situated Latin American countries, embarked on an extensive process of Westernisation under its national founder, Attaturk.

Jordan, a lower-middle income nation, also compares favorably with similarly situated non-Muslim states. The Jordanian royal family is committed to Westernisation, has generously sponsored the Royal Scientific Society and, unlike most Arab states, been willing to engage in scientific research programmes with Israel. Several of the wealthy Gulf states have begun developing national science programmes. Malaysia, the only Muslim state to be a major exporter of high tech products, had embarked on a national programme to develop these industries.

In recent years, Iran has increased its research output, having started from a very low base. The reformist governments of the 1990s encouraged scientific research and increased investment in higher education, which had been devastated by the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Ira War of the 1980s. It is worth noting that many of the leading scholars of Islam's Golden Age were Iranian and that although Iran is under an Islamic regime, it remains proud of its distinct pre-Islamic culture. Clearly, political leadership willing to invest the resources is essential to developing effective research and development programmes, but the willingness to diverge from mainstream Muslim thinking also appears to be crucial.

The adoption and expansion of scientific research in the Muslim world will be an important indicator of how Islam is coming to terms with modernity. Although Muslims may choose not to Westernise, it is not feasible for a society to compete in the modern world without substantial mastery of modern technology. However, the spread of modern science in the Muslim world may be more than an indicator of modernisation, it may also be the catalyst.

Country Number of publications in journals 1995-2004
Turkey 82,407

Egypt 27,723

Iran 19,114

Saudi Arabia 17,472

Malaysia 10,674

Morocco 10,113

Pakistan 7,832

Indonesia 5,118

Bangladesh 4,745

Source: Thomson Scientific Web of Science database

PULL QUOTE: "Seeking explanations from the Quran rather than through experimentation does little to develop the necessary scientific base"

RELATED ARTICLE:'Understanding Arab media analysis' in Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst, 24-Jul-2006.