Islam, extremism and free thinking: whatever happened to science in Islam? A short history of Islam and the Middle East

The Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the reactions to them, have brought the spotlight on to the place that free speech and religion have in society, and how people arrive at different points of view.

An excellent article by a learned Muslim recently pointed out how science and Islam at one time went hand-in-hand; what has changed is that the faith has been hijacked by - in effect - a multitude of tyrants over the centuries, who decided to use "Islam" as a way to control society, by peddling the temptation of forty virgins, for instance. I mean what educated person, of any faith, could take such things seriously?

While it has always been argued by atheists that religion has been a weapon to control society with, it was also true that, in the early years of Islam, Islamic countries were much more progressive and innovative in their relation to science compared to Christian nations of the time. The Islamic world invented astronomy, for example, at a time when Christian Europe was engulfed in the Dark Ages. What changed was not about the nature of the religion in itself, but in the situation on the ground, and how respective societies were run.
The "renaissance" was a breakthrough for the Christian West, but this happened around the same time that large parts of the Islamic world were overrun by the Mongol Empire. In the case of Baghdad, one of Islam's and the Middle East's key cities of learning, the city was destroyed and its population massacred. While no one event can be blamed, in the same way that the ideas of the "renaissance" occurred gradually over many decades, the same can be said of Islam's turning away from science and free-thinking. The evolution of the West into a free-thinking, democratic society was due to a series of events and factors; the same can be said of how the Islamic world became engulfed in scientific and innovative lethargy, which, sadly, exists to the present day. The question is:why?

If all else fails, rule by fear

To reiterate the point, it was not inevitable that Islamic countries would become more socially and economically backwards: it was the result of historical factors, and the decisions of those in power.

The Middle East, Islam's core heartland, has been fought over for centuries; that said, so has Europe (most recently in the first half of the 20th century). In the excellent book, "Why Nations Fail" (more on that here), one of the key factors the authors explain is responsible for poverty and lack of innovation in a society is the elite's fear of creative destruction. In a traditional tyranny (or a modern-day dictatorship), the elite rules by fear, and uses a system of corruption and amoral use of force to maintain their hold on power.
In short, if a clever innovator has an idea that might improve society, the elite would rather discredit and destroy the inventor than have the risk that the innovation might make life better for others, which could make other people rich, and thus, more powerful. It is a simple, if purely malicious, rationale. There are many examples of this throughout history, as well as today, explained in the book mentioned - including the Middle East.
The reason why the West is rich is because decisions were taken at different points in the past that led to a "virtuous" circle of events, whereby more and more freedom was given to society, which led to more opportunities for innovation and technological and scientific progress.

In this way, what has happened in the Islamic world since those bright, innovative early years is a type of "vicious circle". After the Mongol Empire overrun parts of the Middle East, it appears that science and innovation declined to insignificance, along with the various tyrants that ran the region as their own personal fiefdoms. This led to them being overrun by the Ottomans in the sixteenth century. But science and innovation didn't improve under the Ottomans either; for instance, while the West began printing books on a large scale by the start of the sixteenth century; the Ottomans only allowed this to happen in the nineteenth century. This was not because printing was "against Islam" ; it was because it appeared to be against the ruling elite's interests. It was surely for this reason that while levels of literacy in England in 1800 were at around half the population, in the Ottoman Empire - the most powerful Islamic state in the world - levels of literacy were at most 3 per cent.

Likewise, when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was established after the First World War, was not pre-ordained or instinctive that the country should be a theocratic, ultra-conservative state: it became like this due to the king seeking the support of the local imams, in order to give the king and his elite a solid support base, and a moral code to control society with. The British also went along with this, for their own, self-interested, reasons. The Arabs of "Saudi Arabia", and the other Arab monarchs, such as the Hashemites of Jordan, relied on tribal support, and prior to the First World War hadn't known anything like a properly-organised Arab polity (let alone innovation and free thinking) for around six hundred years. So the fact that they used their religion as a basis for building support and maintaining power is unsurprising.

"Not In Our Name"?

The resurgence in Islamic extremism historically ties in with this. I wrote previously about how  Islamic extremism emerged on to the world stage thirty-five years ago, and how the Charlie Hebdo attacks are another indication of its mutation into a force against "Western decadence". While the number of moderate Muslims far outnumbers the extremists, it does appear that there are more extremists than there were previously, and certainly are far more "active" in displaying their views compared to any other contemporary world religion. It is not surprising that some in the West are content to play to the extremists' game by saying that there is a de facto "clash of civilsations".

The closer truth is that the moderates are losing the "war" against the extremists in their faith. While some say this is the fault of the religion itself, it might be better to say that, quite simply, the moderates are too scared to say anything publicly (though if this amounts to the same thing is another point).
You might think that in a normal situation, moderate Muslims would be so horrified and angered by the extremists' actions said in their name that they would be all on the street in their thousands angrily protesting against them (e.g. like the "Not In My Name" anti-war Iraq protests). There are a few, but they are few and far between. The moderates may well not do this because they are simply too scared of the possible consequences; in contrast, usually the only Muslims you see protesting are the very "extremists" calling for tyrannical actions against non-Muslims.
Likewise, there have been calls by the British government for the Muslim elders to get more involved in preventing the radicalisation of their youth. Unfortunately, for one, there may be a "generational gap" that is dividing younger from older Muslims in the West. Like the classic case of a teenager who complains that their parents "don't understand them", the same many be true of today's radicalised young Muslims. They are getting most of their information, and indoctrination, from the internet. This is how the "elders" are being cut out of the loop. So for all the British government's good intentions, it may well be aiming for the wrong target.

In other words, Islamic extremism is on the rise in the West because, for wont of a better word, it feels "cool" (read some of the lingo of the kids who go to Syria, and you'll get how close to the mark this really appears!) and thus appeals to insecure young people in need of a "cause"; extremism is strong in the Middle East because it is a useful weapon and diversionary tactic to control society (while blaming the West for Arab poverty).

But this use of power is as old as the hills.

Psychopathy, economics and politics: joining the dots, and "Why Nations Fail"

The author recently read the brilliant book "Why Nations Fail", by Daron Acemoglu, and James A. Robinson. This book explains their theory about why some countries are rich and others are poor; and how historically, various countries became rich, became poor, have always been poor, and so on.

Using many historical and contemporary examples, they show how nation-states can be roughly divided into those that are "extractive" and those that are "inclusive". Essentially, an "extractive" society is one where a closed, ruling elite uses its population to "extract" wealth for its own benefit; an "inclusive" society is one where the population as a whole has easy access to institutions, an open legal system, and their human rights are secured. As you might imagine, "extractive" societies are always significantly poorer than "inclusive" ones, though the scale of "extraction" or "inclusion" depends on the specific circumstances of any one nation-state.

This explanation mirrors something I read years ago about why countries are poor: in a word, corruption. As economics (and politics) is about choices, countries are poor because the wealth and power of the country is concentrated in the hands of a closed elite. An elite could choose to invest in innovation and development, but this would come at a risk of creating other wealthy people, who would want to replace them, or at least ask for more say in how things are being run. If the institutions are corrupt, then this inevitably results in government becoming a closed shop. For this reason, nation-states run in this way would never develop economically beyond a certain level: corruption always holds these countries back. Africa is the poorest continent in the globe for this reason, but this form of "institutionalised" corruption has more-or-less existed in Africa for centuries, going back to before when the Portuguese explored the continent five hundred years ago. In the book "Why Nations Fail", it is also concisely explained why North and South America have such different standards of living: again, the question comes down to corruption and exploitation, of one form or another.

Joining the dots: towards a unified theory?

This got me thinking about some of the points I've made elsewhere about the effect human psychology has on economics and politics, and vice versa. This idea of "extractive" societies sounds similar in tone, at a collective level, to the premise that psychopaths are "leeches" on society at large.

Psychopaths make up roughly 1% of the human population, though with a sliding scale of "severity" of the personality disorder, "semi-psychopaths" may also comprise another few per cent. The glaring differential that marks them out from normal human beings is their lack of empathy (i.e. lack of understanding of human emotion, and how to respond appropriately to it). As described in the linked article earlier:

" ... there are people in human society who do not believe that taxes are "the price of civilisation", and do not believe that government should provide collective services. From a psychological point of view, these people appear to have a severe lack of empathy. "

So economic and political institutions may well also have cumulative effect on human psychology, in that a nation-state's institutions (or chronic lack of them) can erode a person's empathy towards society at large. It must also be said that, by definition,  a disproportionate number of people in corrupt elites around the world - from North Korea's Kim Jong-Un to the richest man in the world, Mexico's Carlos Slim - would also have an empathy deficit, in order to justify what they do. This also explains why the rich (i.e. in the West) complain about paying taxes for public services they do not use; these people display a lack of empathy towards society, and an anti-social attitude towards their responsibilities. More on this later.

In an article last year, I talked about how the historic "hunter-gatherer" society and its contemporary Capitalist equivalent may well generate an environment that is beneficial towards psychopaths. Intriguingly. the authors of "Why Nations Fail" talk about how the hunter-gatherer society's evolution to a sedentary, farming civilisation can likely have only come about through an act of leadership, bringing about an institutional change. In their book, they talk about the example of the Natufian civilisation around 9000BC in the modern-day Holy Land, which was the first known society to make the change from hunting to an agrarian society.
As has been mentioned in earlier posts, psychopaths are also humanity's natural leaders, so much so that Kevin Dutton, who wrote the book "The Wisdom Of Psychopaths", believes that not all of psychopath's psychological attributes are always bad - sometimes, they are even beneficial. In this way, it can be argued that if the authors of "Why Nations Fail" suggest that it was decisive (and therefore, autocratic) decision of a Natufian leader to bring about the "revolution" to a settled farming, it would have taken a great deal of fearlessness (and ruthless enforcement) to bring about this change. And what better person to do this than a psychopath?

Kevin Dutton talks about psychopaths, for all the damage they can wreak on society, as also acting as the "doers" in society, the ones that are fearless at taking risks. Assuming this to be true, it can be surmised that a disproportionately-large number of individuals responsible for humanity's various advances throughout history were psychopaths. If you look at today's entrepreneurs, it's not hard to recognise in a significant number of them the same attributes - the risk-taking, the fearlessness, the occasional amoral ruthlessness - that we recognise in psychopaths. In this sense, they are society's "winners". But this was not always the case.

Different system, different outcome

Different kinds of societies produce different kinds of social environments. The theory of "extractive" and "inclusive" nation-states links to some of the ideas mentioned in an earlier article: that psychopaths thrive in hunter-gatherer/ Capitalist societies, but struggle to advance in stratified and closed societies. This matches, (with some caveats, which I'll explain shortly) to the "inclusive" and "extractive" societies mentioned in "Why Nations Fail".

In the modern world, the most "inclusive" (i.e. egalitarian and open) nation-states can be found in places like Scandinavia: these are societies where inequality levels are very low and standards of living are very high; this is a result of their high-functioning and well-organised institutions. At the opposite end, the most "extractive" nation-states (i.e. the most corrupt, with the most dysfunctional institutions) can be found in the Third World. Nation-states like the USA and the UK are still very high in terms of institutional organisation, but have significantly higher levels of inequality compared to places like Scandinavia.

Modern laissez-faire Capitalism (i.e. the neo-liberal philosophy created by Ayn Rand) engenders a social attitude similar to that found in hunter-gatherer societies, and is probably the best environment for a psychopath to thrive in: this also coincides with the greatest advances in human history. However, endemic to this neo-liberal system is the creation, over time, of a cartel-like structure that has effective control over large segments of economic transactions. This is a natural result of the way "the market" works, when not protected by effective institutions. The creation of this cartel is a fundamental weakness in the system, and also a fundamental problem of what happens when psychopaths rule the roost: they are very good at getting to the top and staying there, doing whatever thy can to preserve their position in society. The creation of these cartels, or "economic elites" are what prevents Capitalist societies from becoming fully inclusive, and explains why psychopaths tend to thrive in them: because fully-inclusive societies are anathema to a psychopath's understanding and interests.

For a psychopath,  an "extractive" society of a closed elite creates a glass barrier he finds difficult to pass; conversely, a fully-inclusive society creates institutions and rights that prevent a psychopath from amorally securing his position at the top for perpetuity. He might get to the top for a while, but "the system" will quickly root out and cast down any amoral usurpers. In a Capitalist system, this is less likely to happen while also giving him more opportunities to amorally profit from others, and would thus be a psychopath's preferred social environment to advance in.

There are psychopaths in any society, "extractive" as well as "inclusive". When psychopaths rule the roost, the result is chaos, regardless of the social make-up of the system. The question is: how to make psychopaths "work", so that the system gets the best out of them, without breaking the system.