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Pervez Hoodbhoy Books

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“The rote nature of education in contemporary Muslim societies can be traced to attitudes inherited from traditional education, wherein knowledge is something to be acquired rather than discovered. and in which the attitude of mind is passive and receptive rather than creative and inquisitive. The social conditioning of an authoritarian traditional environment has. as an inescapable consequence. That all knowledge comes to be viewed as unchangeable and all books tend to be memorized or venerated to some degree. The concept of secular knowledge as a problem-solving tool which evolves over time is alien to traditional thought.”

BackwardnessMuslim Education
Book:Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality
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“The new Islamic science has been fathered by the global resurgence of orthodoxy in Muslim countries; it is not peculiar to Pakistan by any means. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia are also particularly active centres. However, it is not confined by national boundaries and is particularly to be found amongst immigrants settled in the West. It evidently provides a form of psychological defence against the continuous battering by modern science in its many manifestations. For this reason, one must not expect the phenomenon to disappear in the decades to come.”

BackwardnessMuslim Orthodoxy
Book:Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality
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“Following the ascendancy of the conservative Sunni Caliph al-Mutawakkil, whom Syed Ameer Ali describes as a 'cruel drunken sot in league with the qazis and mullahs,' the physical extermination of Mu'tazilites, together with Shias, began in earnest. They were removed from all governmental positions, accused of heresy, subjected to torture, and summarily executed. Scholars and scientists, most of whom subscribed to rationalist beliefs, fled Baghdad for other parts of the Islamic world. Thus ended the most serious attempt to combine reason with revelation in Islam. Apart from various isolated efforts by individua119th century Muslim reformers, the separation between the religious and secular has been complete in Islam ever since.”

MuslimRationalismMullahsConservativism
Book:Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality
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“Fire causes burning, lightning causes thunder, winds cause waves, and gravity causes bodies to fall. Such connections between an effect and its cause form the cornerstone of scientific thinking, both modern and classical. But this notion of causality is one which is specifically rejected by Asharite doctrine, and the most articulate and effective opponent of physical causality was AI-Ghazzali”

MuslimAl GhazaliAsharite
Book:Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality
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