How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)

by David Goldman

Muslims do not seek the love of a personal God. The muezzin who summons them to prayer makes clear why Muslims pray. He calls, “Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to success! Come to success! Allah is Great!” Allah is a remote sovereign who loves those who faithfully serve him and hates the slacker; he may have pity on the weak and powerless but is under no obligation to do so. He rewards the faithful with success. Islamic culture, though, has been singularly unsuccessful during the past seven centuries. A religion that abolishes cause and effect does not naturally incline to innovations in natural science, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the previous fecundity of Islamic science dried up within a generation after the twelfth-century triumph of al-Ghazali’s occasionalist view of creation. That philosophy gives rise not to scientific achievement and technological advance, but to the mad, jinn-haunted “science” of Turkish Islamist-in-exile Fethullah Gülen.