The Rot Within

By Anwaar Hussain of TruthSpring

The Muslim world stayed at the pinnacle of glories in science and technology for about 300 years from 900-1200 AD. Muslim science bloomed in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Cordoba, among other cities. Momentous progress was made in such areas as medicine, agronomy, botany, mathematics, chemistry, jurisprudence and philosophy. While the Christian Europe lagged behind pathetically, Muslim thinkers and scientists competed with Chinese for scholastic and scientific leadership.

That was then, of course. So horrendous has been the decline since then that, shuffling along like decapods, the leaders of a millennium ago are virtually scraping the bottom of humanity in the same fields. Perhaps a comparative look at the preoccupation of the Muslim world vis-à-vis the rest of the world would give us a fair idea as to the causes of this pervasive decay.

Here is what the rest of the world is busy in;

A new theory on the universe's birth is being researched by scientists that suggests that our universe may have started not with a big bang but with a big bounce-an implosion that triggered an explosion, all driven by exotic quantum-gravitational effects.

A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has solved the brain-scan cell mystery and revealed that the support cells dubbed astrocytes (because of their star-shaped bodies) form the link between neurons and blood vessels.

Scientists elsewhere have reached back in time 115 million years to one of the most successful flying creatures in Earth's history, the pterodactyl, to conjure a robotic spy plane with next-generation capabilities.

Researchers at the University of the West of England (UWE) are to carry out ground breaking research with collaborators from the University of York into creating electronic systems that can diagnose and heal their own faults in ways similar to the human immune system.

Questions like tackling time travel and why a cancer-related gene can help prevent some forms of the disease may too be near solution. These are just two of the topics that featured in a series of public events and hands-on workshops organized by the University to celebrate National Science and Engineering Week in March this year.

Other Scientists in the Western world have discovered a planet that could harbor life, are miniaturizing transistors to unbelievably smaller dimensions, cloning Rhesus Monkey to produce stem cells, engineering transparent material as strong as steel, excavating and scanning mummified dinosaurs and turning skin cells to stem cells.

And this is what we in the Islamic world are busy in;

Rashad Hassan Khalil, former dean of Islamic law at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt issued a fatwa, a Muslim religious edict, in January 2006 that for married couples, "being completely naked in each other's company annuls the marriage".

Saudi Arabia's Higher Committee for Scientific Research and Islamic Law denounced the adorable Japanese cartoon character Pokémon. The fatwa's authors claimed that Pokémon games include, "the Star of David, which everyone knows is connected to international Zionism and is Israel's national emblem." Religious authorities in the United Arab Emirates joined in.

Mullah Fazlullah of Pakistan, whose disciples have burnt down 140 girl's schools in just six months in Northern Pakistan decreed that administering Polio drops to children was un-Islamic and in fact a Zionist conspiracy to make Muslim men impotent.

According to the NYT, a Saudi newspaper reported of a fatwa on the game of football. Just some of the main features of that ruling are;

1. Play soccer without four lines because this is a fabrication of the heretics' international rules that stipulate using them and delineating them before playing.

2. International terminology that heretics and polytheists use, like "foul," "penalty," "corner," "goal," "out" and others, should be abandoned and not said. Whoever says them should be punished, reprimanded and ejected from the game. He should be publicly told, "You have imitated the heretics and polytheists and this is forbidden."

3. Do not call "foul" and stop the game if someone falls and sprains a hand or foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow or red card to whoever was responsible for the injury or tackle. Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings concerning broken bones and injuries. The injured player should exercise his Sharia rights according to the Koran and you must bear witness with him that so-and-so hurt him on purpose.

4. Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Instead, add to this number or decrease it.

It also turns out that fatwas can be bought rather cheaply. In India, the "cash-for-fatwas" scandal broke when a TV channel broadcast a sting operation showing several Indian Muslim clerics allegedly taking, or demanding, bribes in return for issuing fatwas. The bribes, some of which were as low as $60, were offered by undercover reporters wearing hidden cameras over a period of six weeks.

The reporters even managed to get two fatwas directly opposed to each other, concerning whether one could watch TV. The purchased fatwas covered a wide range of fairly mundane issues e.g. Muslims are not allowed to use credit cards, double beds, or camera-equipped cell phones, and should not act in films, donate their organs, or teach their children English.

Furthermore, quite a few of the fatwas were purchased from noted and respected clerics, showing that the practice is not limited to marginal scholars. Some of these clerics work at important institutions - one belonged to India's most famous Islamic seminary, the Darul Uloom at Deoband.

A Saudi scholar has issued a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of television networks broadcasting "immoral" programs. The 79-year-old scholar, who holds the highest judicial authority in the kingdom, made the comments during a radio show in which he was asked by a caller for his opinions on immoral programmes being broadcast on Arab televisions during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Sheikh Mohamed al-Munajid, a former diplomat and cleric who often appears on Saudi TV said mice were "agents of Satan". "Sharia (Islamic law) calls for the extermination of all mice. That includes the rodents as well as the famous cartoon mouse". He was referring to Mickey Mouse.

A Malaysian museum closed an exhibition on supernatural beings after Islamic religious authorities issued a fatwa against it. The National Fatwa Council had ruled that exhibitions on ghosts, ghouls and supernatural beings were forbidden, as they could undermine the faith of Muslims. Abdul Shukor Husin, the council's chair, was quoted as saying that "supernatural beings are beyond the comprehension of the human mind." "We don't want to expose Muslims to supernatural and superstitious beliefs".

Ezzat Atiya, a male lecturer at Cairo's al-Azhar University gave a rather unmentionable solution to the 'problem' of Muslim men and women working alone in an office. The scribe's sense of decorum does not permit him to put that one down here. The reader is requested to go read it by himself.

Perhaps this too is a Zionist conspiracy to exhort all these distinguished people to take lead roles in the theater of the absurd. If this is the state of mind of the elites of the Islamic world in the 21st century, one shivers to think of the dark contents of the souls of Amir Mangal Bagh and Co.. We truly are standing at the edge of the abyss. The Zionist conspirators can now take a break, sit back, take a beer, and watch the mighty plunge.

However, all this nonsense does bring a few questions to the scribe's mind. Have we gone into a time warp as a whole? Are we in the midst of regenerative degeneration, or degenerative regeneration? Or is it just plain degenerative degeneration? Is it finally time for the swan song?

And above all; is the scribe 'undermining his faith' for thinking these thoughts?

You decide.