Often these days, with regard to the horrors of the wars and terrorism taking place in the Islamic world and elsewhere, you hear reference to a root cause and many claim that it is political or economical in nature. There is a root cause but it is more fundamental than any political or economical philosophy.
The major cause of the irrational acts we see being committed by some people of the Islamic faith has little to do with the Koran and much to do with their culture. Many in Islamic countries are not taught to think independently and are discouraged from exercising their critical thinking skills.
They are taught to listen and blindly obey their religious leaders who interpret the Koran to their own ends. I have read the entire Koran¹ and found nothing to support such crimes as “Honor” killings of girls and women, suicide bombings, sexual mutilation of girls, stoning to death of adulteresses, intolerance of other religions and cultures to the point of murder and on and on. None of this is in the Koran. Such barbarity is a relic of the middle ages and is not found in modern non-Islamic societies, other than in the mentally ill. These crimes are an extreme perversion of the teachings of the Koran.
Sharia Law is not found in the Koran but has been developed over the centuries in the interpretations and rulings of generations of religious scholars whose teachings have created a society that is intellectually crippled. It wasn’t always this way. Early Islamic society was rich in intellectual achievement.
The immigration of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD, known as the hijra, marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar and, essentially, the Islamic era. Major intellectual achievements by Muslims since then include; the translations of early Greek works in the eighth and ninth centuries, the refinement of Arabic numbers to include the use of zero for the first time in the 10th century, in the 11th and 12th centuries major contributions to algebra, mathematics and medicine, the world’s first true astronomical observatory and major works on engineering, technology and pharmacology in the 13th century, and optics in the 14th century².
Since then however, intellectual excellence has given way to emphasis on blind adherence to superstition and today we see the tragic result where neighbor kills neighbor for no reason other than they observe different religious beliefs. Why can’t these people live peacefully as does most of the civilized world? In the United States, for example, where freedom of religion is guaranteed by the US Constitution, almost 304 million people³ with over 65 different religions, including almost 2 million Muslims ⁴ , live together peacefully and practice their religion, or not, as the case may be.
The non-Islamic world has become civilized due to the respect for the rights of individuals as is found in the US Constitution and in other similar legal protections that have spread throughout the modern world.
The root cause for today’s unbelievable barbarity in the Middle East is the same cause that plagued the earliest humans, Homo habilis, since they first walked out of the jungle and onto the savannah about 2 million years ago ⁵ . This continues today with those who refuse to use their minds to analyze the world around them and, instead, persist in blindly following the teachings of those who promote superstition. The root cause is simply the refusal of some humans to exercise their innate critical thinking skills.
All modern humans, Homo sapiens, are born with the same intellectual potential, whether their parents are from an obscure tribe in the remote Amazon jungle of South America or the highlands of New Guinea, or from Paris, France, or Tuba, Senegal, or London, England or New London, Connecticut. Or, even, Gaza. What determines their intellectual actualization is the environment in which they grow and learn of the world around them. A child raised in an environment where superstition is rampant and without an objective education will be unable to function in modern society as a civilized human being.
The intellectually dysfunctional human, which we see in many places in the world, especially the Middle East, is a result of the absence of a rational environment and the promotion of superstition in the madrasas, the religious schools. Here they are taught not to exercise individual critical thinking skills but to memorize and accept the teachings of those who promote their own perverted version of Islam.
This plague of irrationality can be ended by teaching and encouraging all children to use their minds to view the real world as it exists, not as it is taught in the madrasas. Independent thought leads to logical thought processes which lead to rationality and the ultimate rejection of superstition.
So, perhaps the beginning of the end of the gross irrationality of today’s Islamic fundamentalism, and many other religion’s similar irrationalities, is to replace the Shahada, the traditional whispering in the ear of Muslim newborns of testimony that “God is the only God and Muhammad is His messenger”, with “A is A”, Aristotle’s Law of Identity which is the basis of modern Homo sapiens’s use of their instinctive critical thinking skills.
1 The Koran, Revised Translation by N.J. Dawood. Penguin Classics, 1999, 435 pages with Index, and an eBook version The Qur’an or the Koran, translated by E.H. Palmer, that I use with Microsoft Reader. The eBook version is especially handy when searching for a particular word or phrase.
2 Islam for Dummies, Professor Malcolm Clark, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2003.
3 US Census Bureau, 06/18/08, http://www.census.gov
4 The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life,
http://religions.pewforum,org/affiliations
5 The Book of Life, Edited by Stephen Jay Gould, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
2001
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