The Islamic Basis of the Coming Muslim Technological Renaissance by Ali Kyrala

It is argued that the Muslim countries will have a technological renaissance provided they can re-introduce sufficient free competition into their economies and cultures. The Western world is moving towards a catastrophic decline due to its unreasonable delusion that exponential growth rates can be maintained in the absence of new frontiers, due to the unchecked growth of usury west of the Iron Curtain and due to the unchecked growth of state police authority east of the Iron Curtain. Millions of non-Muslims of the East and West are weary of the extremisms of the right and the left and of the attempts to impose upon them private cartelism disguised as a "free economy" or state cartelism disguised as a dictatorship of the "proletariat". They are disgusted and repulsed by propaganda presented to them by political states or "the golden calf" as substitutes for Allah. They will be attracted in great numbers to join Islam if only it can be presented as it was by the Prophet Muhammad on the basis of sincere compliance to his teachings rather than the emphasis on mechanical observances furthered by "Muslim clergy" acting as mediators in contradiction to the Prophet's admonitions. The conception of many Muslim theologists, that science and engineering (or in general innovative thinking) have nothing to do with salvation, must be modified. Their formalistic conceptions of the faith have not produced an iota of improvement in the condition of the oppressed and economically disadvantaged Muslim communities. The general decay in their condition is a message from Allah. Muslims should strive and compete freely to produce the highest level of Muslim culture, not simply lament. If every single Muslim strove continually to learn more than is required for his own livelihood, the brave Islamic Mujahideen would not be so oppressed by technologically superior opponents in so many places in the world. Only Islam, among all religions, with its rejection of anthropomorphic images of the deity and its rejection of special ethnic and political privileges is sufficiently "modern" in concept to survive a hypothetical contact with extraterrestrial races in the galaxy. The recognition that Islam is consistent with modern science should motivate all Muslim scientists and engineers to that extra effort required to return Islamic technology to the forefront of human progress.

Every sincere Muslim has a justifiable pride in the magnificient accomplishments of Muslim scientists, engineers and architects from the first to the ninth century A. H. During that period Muslim countries were att the forefront of world technological progress. To return the Muslim Ummah to this position should be the earnest desire of each technically trained Muslim.

In order to do so, one must comprehend clearly the reasons for the technological decay of the Islamic countries from that position of preeminence during the last 400 years of scientific "sleep" in those countries.

Criticism is often rejected within the Muslim community because it is perceived by some as an attack against Islam itself. Such is not the purpose of this essay. It is to be pursued critically within the framework of the British concept of "the loyal opposition" which seeks to improve, not to undermine. Even as the sharp scalpel of the surgeon may hurt the patient it is used to his ultimate benefit. Those who love the patient most may be psychologically inhibited from cutting him even for his benefit. If the reader "feels the scalpel" in this discussion let him be assured that it is being wielded in the interest of the optimal development of the Islamic world. Nor should it be assumed that this technological decline after preeminence has only befallen Muslim countries.

An attempt will be made here to convince the reader that technological decay is an inevitable concomitant of the asymptotic (end) state of a society which may be characterized as "overdeveloped" and that, contrary to popular opinion, the Muslim countries are not underdeveloped but rather overdeveloped in the organization of their economic systems. In this discussion the terminology adopted will be largely economic, but the arguments may be applied in the intellectual, philosophical and religious spheres as well. The question addressed is "What causes the decline of the innovative progress in a society?". The answer to be supported here is: "Suppression of free competition". This suppression is a perfectly natural but largely unrecognized development in a society whose economy has matured. It has deep psychological roots in familial love and affection. Individuals in families do not allow free competition between members and non-members of their families. They act preferentially in favour of their family members and try to exclude outsiders from this preferential treatment. Surely this is quite natural to recognize a special obligation to one's family. Loyalty to family becomes in the context of social regroupings, loyalty to community, ethnic group, religious sect, company, party, city, state, or country. As soon as such a group is formed, the necessity for delineating its boundaries requires the introduction of special prerogatives for its adherents. In a way this is required to clarify its definition. The advantages for members of such a group versus the opportunities available to the general public then constitute a suppression of competition with respect to the activities of that group. As groups grow in power and scope, competition is suppressed on a larger scale.

In a "newly formed" society almost everything is disorganized and free competition is rampant. There is a veritable ferment of innovations to satisfy the demands of a rapidly developing market. In this free competition groups which can organize most efficiently to satisfy consumer demand will tend to displace less efficient groups which cannot meet such a demand. By absorption of the marketing areas formerly controlled by less efficient groups the successful ones grow exponentially. Eventually they dominate the market so completely that they are able to form cartels with exclusive control over the sources of their materials and to free themselves from the necessity of competition.

When this happens, the cartels naturally wish to decrease costs and when there is no competition to which the consumer can turn they simply dictate design and price to the consumer who now has no choice but to buy from these cartels or buy nothing. It is at this stage that the quality of goods and services in the society begin to decline. Innovativeness which was at premium value to overcome competition, is no longer necessary and is viewed as an unjustifiable expense. It is more "cost effective" to use existing designs and equipment. There is so little randomness in the economy that very little "risk capital" is available to support bold new ideas. Economic opportunities which were so plentiful in the initial state of the society become seldom events.

Inevitably the economically powerful groups in the society exert pressure on the government to prevent prices from falling while wages are left free to fluctuate. This is not a free economy nor should it be called capitalism, which was linked to the freely competitive growth phase of the early economic system. This leads to a stabilization of the economic structure of the society, an inhibition of opportunities for innovative progress in the society, and to a stratified society with a steady-state class structure. The socialist countries with their rigid commitments to cartelized economies rather than freely competitive ones are even closer to the asymptotic end state dominated by priviledged government officials contemptuous of the citizens they control.

To be sure, there are still a few public-spirited officials here and there, but how long can "noblesse oblige" survive in such an atmosphere with no religious inhibition to stem the lust for power?

The term cartel often conjures up the image of multinational corporations of the modern period, but the concept of a generalized organization capable of suppressing free competition is what is meant here. In this sense one finds cartelism is of ancient origin and feudal cartelism is still with us today. It is a perfectly natural development in the mature stage of a society but after competition has been eliminated the society becomes stratified with a rigid class structure and change and innovative progress are viewed as disturbing elements to be suppressed.

There are extreme examples of such societies still surviving among us unchanged for millions of years and still unchanging. These are the ants and the bees and the termites. To be sure individual humans have immensely more neurons but as our societies become more rigidly organized they assume some of the characteristics of the arthropod societies in which deviations from preassigned behavior modes are punished severely. There is no individual dignity or privacy in an arthropod society. State planning has preempted all individual innovations and thinking and the State cannot be questioned. The implementation of such a government requires that its subjects continually spy upon one another to ensure compliance. The Prophet Muhammad (SAAS) in his wisdom forbade such spying and clearly did not wish to establish a system of unreasoning obedience to the state. The strength of the state should derive from the unextorted consent of the governed and from their confidence in the justice dispensed to them. Prophet Muhammad (SAAS) also forbade usury which is well on its way to destroying the economies of the Western world. According to the theory promulgated in the West interest is "justified" by the need for growth capital which is supposed to ultimately increase productive capacity. Under economic conditions where the increase in productive capacity is severely curtailed there is no substantial growth and the permeation of the economy with an interest system geared towards exponential growth simply produces inflation. This exacerbates the stratification of the society by widening the gap in living standard between wage-earners and wage-providers who can simply raise prices to avoid being undercut by inflation. In the West inflation is viewed as no one's responsibility but it certainly functions as an efficient mechanism for impoverishment of wage-earners quite as well as a deliberate policy.

The people west of the Iron Curtain are disillusioned by the unstemmed increase of usury, inflation, materialism and indecency. The people east of the Iron Curtain are disillusioned by the absolute authority of the state, restrictions on freedom of speech and travel, special economic prerogatives of the political minorities that rule them, continual surveillance by secret police with unrestricted authority and a judicial system with pre-arranged verdicts.

Islam offers a faith of universal brotherhood in which espionage and usury are forbidden, in which the dignity of women is protected, and in which a higher obligation of the wealthy and powerful than to the state is recognized and their commitment to assist the less fortunate clearly enunciated. As the economies of Western Europe and the Americas fail in a sea of usury and the economies of the socialist states of Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa fail from overcontrol, the World of Islam will emerge to regain its former pre-eminence if and only if it can re-introduce the element of free competition into its societies. This requires a revision of custom very difficult to achieve for the Muslim world. It means that people must be given job opportunities on the basis of abilities rather than family affiliations. It means that national policies must be formulated on the basis of Islamic unity and common Muslim advantage rather than upon one of familial advantage. It means that free competition of ideas free of coercion by special interest groups must be restored to Muslim universities and that professors of different opinions and views must be allowed to express them in the same university. It means that students must be free of coercion by professors to follow paths dictated by them. In spite of excellent performance by individual Muslim scientists and engineers in foreign countries, the research output of Muslim universities is today negligible. This can only change by allowing more free competition and rewarding innovation rather than resisting it through fear that one will be required to learn more things to teach. The strange notion that a professor already knows all he must learn upon entry into the academic profession is far too widespread in Islamic universities. We must find new ways of teaching Muslim students. Innovation is not to be achieved by simply copying the West.

The crushing weight of blind adherence to Islamic orthodoxy which emphasize rigid observances of ritualistic ceremonies as a mechanistic formula for salvation was a major factor in the decline of Islamic science and this should be excluded from the Islamic universities. This does not mean that Islamic philosophy should be excluded. The fear that something might be discussed which would subvert the ideals and ethics of Islam can only be entertained by those whose faith is too weak to recognize the intrinsic power of Islam. The Prophet advocated unhampered acquisition of knowledge and warned against the inefficacy of mechanistic observances. Understanding and sincere belief were what he most emphasized and any attempt of certain groups among the Muslims to function as a clergy was strictly forbidden. "There is no compulsion in faith" is in the second surah of the Qur'an. Even forcing people to pray subscribes to the infantile notion that Allah cannot distinguish genuine sincerity and hypocrisy. Although the call of the Islamic fundamentalists for a return to Islamic law is clearly motivated by a desire to overcome the corruption and deviousness of certain Middle East governments, it has the great danger to Islam that it may attract the masses to a conception of salvation achieved by mechanical observances of ceremonies rather than by a sincere reflection (dhikr) on the inner meaning of Muhammad's (SAAS) message. Any attempt to restrict this meditative aspect of Islam to a "Muslim clergy" while leaving "mechanical observances" to the lay public would be a clear contradiction of the Prophet's admonitions.

Finally, let us turn to the reasons why Islamic beliefs are consistent with modern Science. Muhammad emphasized "striving mightily" to acquire wisdom. In Islam the concept of Allah is an abstraction free of inconsistent descriptions in terms of human or other forms. Thus Islam is the only religion which could survive encounters with alien lifeforms from other regions of the universe without major revision. It does not submit pictures of one race's conception of a deity for worship by another race. It offers universal salvation on the basis of ethical behavior to all intelligent beings. There are no hypocritical racial prejudices in Islam.

The contention of atheists that there is no deity is equivalent to the contention that there is no universal ordering principle in the universe. Aside from the fact that there exists no proof of their contention even if it were true, it would contradict the most fundamental conception of science that events are to some extent predictable on the basis of scientifically observed order in the universe.

Faith in the predictability (statistical or deterministic) of events is at the root of science, ancient and modern. Logic is a very powerful tool of the human mind, but it can only ideally extract conclusions from premises. It cannot validate the relevance of the premises to human beliefs. To function in this life with a feeling of security, man must have beliefs. Even the transition between steps in a logical argument is based upon faith.

The Islamic Tawhid, the single unifying all-embracing principle of natural law at once the logical union of all natural laws which the most enlightened of the ancient Egyptians called neter (the origin of the Latin world natura) leaves man free but also obligated to study all correlations of natural phenomena within the scope of his mental abilities. Polytheism does not demand a single source and in this way inhibits deeper investigations by terminating questioning along multiple paths ending in multiple deities. In this sense the Tawhid doctrine is a powerful impetus for the development of modern science.

The Islamic principle of Zakat goes far beyond the dispensation of one fortieth of a Muslim's income to his needy brothers in Islam. It means to Islamic scientists and engineers that their efforts must never cease to raise the stan-dard of living and improve the understanding of Muslim communities everywhere. Only when each Muslim community can be a shining example of progress to other communities of the world will the cause of Islam be fur-thered. As long as a single Muslim family exists in a state of economic abase- ment, social degradation or political oppression, every Muslim is disgraced. It is this interpretation of Zakat which will lead Islam to the forefront of world progress again.

The Muslim principle of Sawm goes beyond the abstinence from eating during daylight hours of Ramadan for those whose health permits. It requires a genuine concern, sympathy and social consciousness for the hungry and the unfortunate. As long as any Muslim feels hunger no Muslim scientist or engineer should relax his efforts to solve the root problems leading to this condition. The Sahel drought problem partially caused by Western ecological mismanagement is a case in point. There is no reason why a consortium of Muslim Banks could not finance a Qattara inland freshwater lake project with immense benefits in agriculture, electric power generation, etc. Nuclear explosions could be used to construct a canal from the Mediterranean and a desalination plant could be hydroelectrically powered by the elevation difference. Muslim technologists must think beyond the giving of food to the provision of a technical base for a bountiful agriculture.

The Muslim obligation of Hajj must go beyond the requirement of travelling to Makkah and participating in the ceremonies. There must be constructed a great central Islamic information center complete with museums and libraries and taped tutorial courses so that every Hajji may have the opportunity whatever his level of understanding to improve his mastery of his profession, trade or craft and thus carry back with him the latest knowledge in his field to enrich his home community. Thus Islamic technology can return to the forefront of human endeavour.

The principle of Muslim Şalah must go beyond the important recognition and praise of the Rahmat Allah and embody a persistent plea for improvement of understanding and guidance for intellectural growth and for the avoidance of intellectural arrogance which only cripples the capacity for creative thinking. The greatest intellectural accomplishments of mankind and its geniuses represent only a kind of stumbling progress compared with the clear path of the enlightenment from Allah without whose guidance the clever sophistry is without avail. Still it is the duty of Muslims to strive mightily and ceaselessly to improve their understanding of the world of nature and submission to the Will of Allah implies this lifelong struggle not the sleep of individuals nor the sleep of centuries by societies. He who fails to try to improve his mind to its optimal capacity treads the path to progress backwards to the status of the unthinking beast. Without exception all will be judged on the basis of what they chose to do compared with what they could have done.

These are the five pillars of Islam as they should be seen by every Muslim scientist and engineer. They are not to be seen as a maximal set of obligations but rather as a minimal set to be expanded into a complete philosophy of Islamic technology in service of man's traversal of al Sirat al Mustaqim.

In Islam, science is not isolated from the system of belief but is an integral part of the Muslim Ummah.

-Islamization of Attitudes and Practices in Science and Technology. Written Ali Kyrala.