[GW3]∎ [PDF] Gratis The Closing of the Muslim Mind How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis eBook Robert R Reilly

The Closing of the Muslim Mind How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis eBook Robert R Reilly

Download As PDF : The Closing of the Muslim Mind How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis eBook Robert R Reilly

The book you must read to understand the Islamist crisis—and the threat to us all


Robert R. Reilly’s eye-opening book masterfully explains the frightening behavior coming out of the Islamic world. Terrorism, he shows, is only one manifestation of the spiritual pathology of Islamism.

Reilly uncovers the root of our contemporary crisis a pivotal struggle waged within the Muslim world nearly a millennium ago. In a heated battle over the role of reason, the side of irrationality won. The deformed theology that resulted, Reilly reveals, produced the spiritual pathology of Islamism, and a deeply dysfunctional culture.

The Closing of the Muslim Mind solves such puzzles as

· Why the Arab world stands near the bottom of every measure of human development
· Why scientific inquiry is nearly dead in the Islamic world
· Why Spain translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years
· Why some people in Saudi Arabia still refuse to believe man has been to the moon

The Closing of the Muslim Mind How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis eBook Robert R Reilly

Bookstores are lately full of obituaries for Muslim civilization describing its decline. (We have a surviving Muslim culture, but the civilization is a faded memory.) Most analyses (like Bernard Lewis's "What Went Wrong") are quite good, but Robert Reilly's highly readable "The Closing of the Muslim Mind" is the best of a good lot. It takes you further, describing the original ideas that inspired Islam's self-inflicted intellectual decapitation--not simply tracing the social the social eruptions which followed.

You might well expect that a book focusing on the intricacies of arguments between Medieval Quranic scholars would be a suffocatingly tedious read, but it's not. The theological hairs these gentlemen sought to split were large and had far larger consequences. The modern Islamic world (make that the anti-modern Islamic world) is largely the product of a thousand years of bad ideas--mixed with oil. (Quick note: this book is about Sunni Islam. Shi'a Islam explicitly excluded.)

It's hard to recall that Islamic civ was once far ahead of Western civ. Early in Islamic history Arab conquests took them into captured libraries full of Greek philosophy, science, mathematics and culture and Islamic intellectual life expanded suddenly and exponentially. Many seminal works the West claims today as its own originally arrived as translations from Arabic. The numbers we use today, "Arabic" (actually Indian) numerals came in on a tide of Arabic words like algebra and algorithm. Arab civilization in the 10th seemed to have a bright future. Then, in the 11th century Islam reversed course. The pendulum swung so far away from the rationalism of Greek philosophy it never came back.

The linchpin of this change was over the alleged power of Allah. It became a theological fetish to ascribe Him flattering new dimensions of potency. Imaginative arguments were made inflate the Creator--always at the expense of the created. Allowing for some necessary oversimplilfication, here are some high points:
-----Omnipotence. Far more God-powers. Even to the point of dismissing all natural law, all cause & effect Every event from the molecular to the cosmic becomes Allah's will. (God is Great!...and getting Greater!)
-----Onmiscience. He knows your fate and all future events. Failure & success, heaven or hell, happiness or misery--His choice, not yours. All entered into history by an Angel before you exist. (Divine determinism, Islamic style: only He is free.)
-----Unknowability. You can know nothing about Him or His motives. To attempt to discover or postulate Allah's nature becomes blasphemy--a capital crime. All His commandments are beyond human logic: arbitrary and absolute. Obedience is the bedrock source of morality, all law, all behavior. No modifications allowed.

This revolt against reason isn't just a theological word game. It has big consequences. If knowledge is impossible and all nature compressed into divine caprice, investigating the world is more than a waste of time, it's a potentially fatal heresy. Science is now useless: what good is physics or psychology if atoms and thoughts--or even tomorrow's sunrise--are subject to Allah's will? You don't need a philosophical turn of mind to see where this leads--or doesn't lead. Most of us in the West are used to thinking on our own, to solving problems without waiting for authority. We can recognize a dumb idea and call it that. But in a world where obedience is prized above (way above) initiative, Allah's potency is a recipe for intellectual inertia, for enforced dogma--and for violence: when the framework for rational mediation is lost, conflicts will be settled by force. Obedience to the victor is as imperative as to Allah.

Untethered from a knowable reality, Islamic fantasy is free to soar. Reilly provides nearly a whole chapter of preposterously paranoid quotations (mostly about the Satanic West and the Evil Jew) from Arabic news media and religious authorities, and statistics like the staggering number of Muslims who believe Mossad and George Bush engineered 9/11 to provide an excuse to kill Muslims. (Probably including believers who danced in the streets when it happened). There's also a bagful of humorously illustrative examples like the Pakistani Mullahs getting weather forecasts banned, or science books obliged to stress the decisive force of Allah's will whenever 3 atoms combine to make a water molecule.

This Islamic cultural lobotomy which gave us nuisance terrorism has given Islamic world much worse: the planet's worst human rights records (especially for women), world class corruption, a subsistence economy (relieved only by oil exports), widespread illiteracy, and an attitude toward problems which favors blame over solutions. The problems are worsening, not improving. Reilly shows today's Islamic rulers and radicals have Islamified many central ideas of 20th C. totalitarianism (both Nazi & Leninist) and made them their own.

It's not a cheery book to read--considering how long it will take to reverse 1,000 years of civilizational decline in a semi-literate culture--but it is more informative about the how & why of current and past events than any other book I've read on the subject.

Product details File Size 494 KB Print Length 244 pages Publisher Intercollegiate Studies Institute (April 8, 2014) Publication Date April 8, 2014 Sold by  Digital Services LLC Language English ASIN B00JBRUKZS

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The Closing of the Muslim Mind How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis eBook Robert R Reilly Reviews

This has been one occasion where I enjoyed the comments listed nearly as much as the book. There's some great summaries about the book's content contained here so there is no need for me to do so also. What it comes down to, though, is regarding "reason" and "free will". But let me take a different perspective on this. I am glad that there exists a platform such as what offers here so that many can enjoy their "free will" to post their opinions regarding the content of this book, hopefully being rational and utilizing their faculties of "reason." The problems we are encountering with Islam become clearer when we realize that no such platform really exists in the Muslim world, because simply, everything they may need to know is supposedly contained within one "uncreated" book. And hence, take that and apply it to any topic of importance in our world today and you you'll better understand why we are in the predicament we are in. When reason and personal free will are not considered necessary or appropriate, problems will certainly arise.
I'd like to thank the author for his understanding of what happened about a thousand years ago, that eventually had the Muslim world taking a much different direction from the one the Christian world would take about six-seven hundred years later. To me, it seems to make sense, and brings to light that the solution, finding a solution, will certainly not be easy. I also want to express my appreciation to those who commented, who provided alternative reasons for why we are where we are today (and this is a "we" situation - it is affecting all of us now) or perhaps why Mr. Reilly's theory should be challenged. But last call to the author, because I never would have had the opportunity to read their insightful comments if he hadn't written the book.
Bookstores are lately full of obituaries for Muslim civilization describing its decline. (We have a surviving Muslim culture, but the civilization is a faded memory.) Most analyses (like Bernard Lewis's "What Went Wrong") are quite good, but Robert Reilly's highly readable "The Closing of the Muslim Mind" is the best of a good lot. It takes you further, describing the original ideas that inspired Islam's self-inflicted intellectual decapitation--not simply tracing the social the social eruptions which followed.

You might well expect that a book focusing on the intricacies of arguments between Medieval Quranic scholars would be a suffocatingly tedious read, but it's not. The theological hairs these gentlemen sought to split were large and had far larger consequences. The modern Islamic world (make that the anti-modern Islamic world) is largely the product of a thousand years of bad ideas--mixed with oil. (Quick note this book is about Sunni Islam. Shi'a Islam explicitly excluded.)

It's hard to recall that Islamic civ was once far ahead of Western civ. Early in Islamic history Arab conquests took them into captured libraries full of Greek philosophy, science, mathematics and culture and Islamic intellectual life expanded suddenly and exponentially. Many seminal works the West claims today as its own originally arrived as translations from Arabic. The numbers we use today, "Arabic" (actually Indian) numerals came in on a tide of Arabic words like algebra and algorithm. Arab civilization in the 10th seemed to have a bright future. Then, in the 11th century Islam reversed course. The pendulum swung so far away from the rationalism of Greek philosophy it never came back.

The linchpin of this change was over the alleged power of Allah. It became a theological fetish to ascribe Him flattering new dimensions of potency. Imaginative arguments were made inflate the Creator--always at the expense of the created. Allowing for some necessary oversimplilfication, here are some high points
-----Omnipotence. Far more God-powers. Even to the point of dismissing all natural law, all cause & effect Every event from the molecular to the cosmic becomes Allah's will. (God is Great!...and getting Greater!)
-----Onmiscience. He knows your fate and all future events. Failure & success, heaven or hell, happiness or misery--His choice, not yours. All entered into history by an Angel before you exist. (Divine determinism, Islamic style only He is free.)
-----Unknowability. You can know nothing about Him or His motives. To attempt to discover or postulate Allah's nature becomes blasphemy--a capital crime. All His commandments are beyond human logic arbitrary and absolute. Obedience is the bedrock source of morality, all law, all behavior. No modifications allowed.

This revolt against reason isn't just a theological word game. It has big consequences. If knowledge is impossible and all nature compressed into divine caprice, investigating the world is more than a waste of time, it's a potentially fatal heresy. Science is now useless what good is physics or psychology if atoms and thoughts--or even tomorrow's sunrise--are subject to Allah's will? You don't need a philosophical turn of mind to see where this leads--or doesn't lead. Most of us in the West are used to thinking on our own, to solving problems without waiting for authority. We can recognize a dumb idea and call it that. But in a world where obedience is prized above (way above) initiative, Allah's potency is a recipe for intellectual inertia, for enforced dogma--and for violence when the framework for rational mediation is lost, conflicts will be settled by force. Obedience to the victor is as imperative as to Allah.

Untethered from a knowable reality, Islamic fantasy is free to soar. Reilly provides nearly a whole chapter of preposterously paranoid quotations (mostly about the Satanic West and the Evil Jew) from Arabic news media and religious authorities, and statistics like the staggering number of Muslims who believe Mossad and George Bush engineered 9/11 to provide an excuse to kill Muslims. (Probably including believers who danced in the streets when it happened). There's also a bagful of humorously illustrative examples like the Pakistani Mullahs getting weather forecasts banned, or science books obliged to stress the decisive force of Allah's will whenever 3 atoms combine to make a water molecule.

This Islamic cultural lobotomy which gave us nuisance terrorism has given Islamic world much worse the planet's worst human rights records (especially for women), world class corruption, a subsistence economy (relieved only by oil exports), widespread illiteracy, and an attitude toward problems which favors blame over solutions. The problems are worsening, not improving. Reilly shows today's Islamic rulers and radicals have Islamified many central ideas of 20th C. totalitarianism (both Nazi & Leninist) and made them their own.

It's not a cheery book to read--considering how long it will take to reverse 1,000 years of civilizational decline in a semi-literate culture--but it is more informative about the how & why of current and past events than any other book I've read on the subject.