.... My co-panelist was the first to speak and he began with two assertions with which I agree: that the state of science and rationalist disciplines in the contemporary Muslim world is generally pitiful and that it is a desideratum of the utmost urgency that the situation be remedied.
This was a heartening start, but the aetiology of the current situation that was offered thereafter was deeply flawed. We were told - amidst amusing personal anecdotes - that the reason for the failure of rationalism in the Muslim world must be traced back to the emergence of a neat break between the world of flourishing freethinkers in the classical or Golden Age of Islam (ca. 800-1200) and the Dark Ages (ca. 1200-2013) that followed with the ascendancy of mainstream Islamic orthodoxy.
In the wake of the death knell of philosophy and rationalism sounded by the Sunni theologian, al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the story went, Muslim rationalism fell into a deep slumber. [openDemocracy] Read more
