Centerfield

Islam And Toleration

I see some common misunderstandings about Islamic history that I think are worth clearing up, especially concerning religious tolerance, the nature of early Muslim empire and success, how said empire decayed, and comparisons between Christian and Islamic Reformations.

Some commenters have looked at the Protestant Reformation, looked at contemporary successes of extreme Islamism, and wondered when the corresponding Islamic Reformation will be. But Christians were extremists, killing for their faith left and right (see the utterly horrid Thirty Years' War), after the Reformation. Really, I think, people are asking when we'll see Islamic religious toleration. But, in fact, that long predated wide Christian toleration, which didn't appear until the 18th century.

The real story is that, in general, contrary to Christian progression, Muslim nations started more tolerant and became less tolerant as time went on. Early Islam and Islamic empires grew rapidly because, to most people living in that region, Islamic rule was more tolerant and offered better choices than their previous rulers - mostly the Byzantine Empire, which compelled its subjects to abide by a truly Talibanesque form of Christianity. Early Christians created and have hung on to (Pope Benedict wants us to still hang on to it) to a myth of conversion entirely by the sword, but it doesn't seem to have been like that.

This tolerance, unmatched anywhere at the time, made early Islamic culture extremely successful. That's why we use Arabic words to refer to "algebra"and "zero" - because they wrote the books that Christian scholars read to pick up those ideas. They also invented postgraduate university degrees. Muslim nations dominated Mediterranean trade because they allowed certain immigrants that then had ties far away; interestingly, certain trading classes deliberately exchanged kids from far away to compete with that advantage.

As time went on, the early Islamic Empire fragmented more and more, starting between Sunni and Shi'a. After a few centuries, fanatic Berbers started to make inroads on conquering some of those fragments, and using power over those fragments to dominate or conquer others. Once the fanatics came to power, that, of course, started the first round of tolerant Islam and culture downhill. They stopped inventing things, had fewer and worse schools, traded less and less, and had less and less turf.

The Ottomans stepped into this vacuum. It was a replay of the dissolution of the Byzantines. They won because they were tolerant, and stayed on top because they evolved inherently tolerant habits that encouraged good rule. They were on top until democratic powers evolved better rules, during the 18th and 19th centuries.

As the Ottoman Empire failed, due to newspapers bolstering nationalism, and a wide perception within the Empire of Ottoman weakness compared to Western Europe, the subject peoples revolted. Although they were individually free from empire, they were generally individually worse-led than under the Ottomans. Liberalism suffered everywhere in the old areas of Ottoman rule except Turkey, though even Turkey still is only beginning to reach full modern human rights standards and become competitive with the modern democracies.

Many Arab nations are having problems now because they offer worse and even less liberal rule than many of their predecessors ruling the same regions - and said predecessors were only liberal by Medieval standards, not a high post to leap.

Tolerant strands and traditions of Islam are still powerful, and indeed have gathered strength. They're particularly strong in the tolerant democracies, where goons like the Taliban or el'Sadr can't bash so many heads in. Here and in other tolerant environments, tolerant Muslims vastly outnumber extremists. Indeed, though we can't conduct good polls of most of the Middle East, the repeated strength of moderation in Iraqi polls is a good sign that said dynamic might extend to the rest of the Muslim populations still under oppression, if their voices were free to speak, despite the propaganda.

I happen to believe the Bush Administration was right about needing to reliberalize the region to end the collaboration between its bad rulers and terror.

Some Interesting Reading: Some interesting background material (see The Caliphate), an essay on Muslim tolerance, and an review of a book on a group of traders in the Caliphate.