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To: Scanian
I have and am currently reading a very good book, "The Closing of the Muslim Mind" by Robert R Reilly. It is about a crisis of intellect that the Islamic World suffered between the 9th and 11th Centuries of our current era (AD / CE) that it has never recovered from.

It appears (I am still reading) that it became a heresy against Islam to use reason and intellect to explain the natural world since the entire justification of this religion was an utter submission to Allah in total suspension of intellect. This combined with the concept that everything is explained and all the rules are laid out in the 12th Century Sharia Law leaves little wiggle-room for intellectual expansion.

28 posted on 07/10/2010 4:49:16 AM PDT by SES1066 (Cycling to conserve, Conservative to save, Saving to Retire, will Retire to Cycle.)
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To: SES1066

I’ve read some things like that myself elsewhere. Apparently it had to do with the rediscovery of Greek philosophy around the time of the Crusades. The medieval Church responded with Scholasticism, which allowed that reason and faith could coexist. The Muslim scholars (some guy named al-Shafi or something like that, among others) pretty much tossed out reason and said “faith only!” It does explain a lot about why the Islamic world has places that might as well still be the year 1200.....


31 posted on 07/10/2010 5:03:33 AM PDT by GenXteacher (He that hath no stomach for this fight, let him depart!)
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