One Thing Has Been Holding Back the Middle East

Few other sources of dysfunction come with organized cultural generational reinforcement practices, systemic social respect and judgement, daily personal energy investment, family and friendship bonds, and both elite and grassroots level power classes that a religion can create. Not to mention the afterlife plans and ancestor reunions.

Note how reliably political polarization is associated with one or both sides weaving the sticky glue of religion into completely unrelated (and blatantly contradictory) partisan identities.

There is nothing about authoritarian regimes which prevents them from making scientific progress. See e.g. China, a society with substantial authoritarian features, a massive surveillance state and one party rule. At the same time they became one of the best manufacturers of everything in the world. Within a decade they built up a world class car industry, which both the US and the EU had to ban from competing.

Before the advent of Islam in the 7th century AD, the area that is currently geographically named the "Middle East" basically consisted of different and well developed cultures spread out over Persia (Iran, Iraq etc.), The Levant (Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria etc.), North Africa (Egypt, Algeria etc.), Turkey and regions around the Mediterranean. They were all traveling/learning to/from the rest of the World and disseminating knowledge throughout their areas of commerce/influence. When Europe was backward in the doldrums under the anti-scientific/anti-knowledge influence of the Christian Church these pre-Islamic cultures collected, maintained and developed forgotten knowledge from Greek/Indian/Chinese/Other sources.

Then Islam happened and everything started going downhill slowly at first and then accelerating as Europe threw off the Christian Church's yoke and stepped into enlightenment thus increasing the knowledge gap. The so-called "Islamic Golden Age" is nothing more than these populations still preserving and developing knowledge in spite of Islam for a few generations when Islamic orthodoxy had not yet gained full ascendancy over the minds of these cultures. But once Islamic orthodoxy was imposed by the sword on the populations of these cultures, all striving towards scientific knowledge ceased and they were doomed, the results of which we see today.

Note that even after European Colonialism was thrown off, while other non-Islamic countries (notably India/China) have made great scientific progress, almost all current-day Islamic countries are going nowhere. Their record of scientific development, social reforms etc. is abysmal and they seem to not realize that it is their own belief system which is holding them back. Their only hope is to change Islam so it fits in better with the Modern World.

PS: Dr. Jamshed Uppal made a presentation with survey data across Islamic countries titled Are Muslim Attitudes Tuned For Economic Progress? (the data is a shocking and definitive no) but the video seems to have been removed from Youtube - https://theblackhole.pk/event/are-muslim-attitudes-tuned-for...

In this session, Dr. Jamshed Uppal explores how socio-religious attitudes and practices affect economic outcomes in Muslim majority countries. Drawing on World Values Survey data for 66 countries, he examines eight categories of attitudes that are conducive to economic growth, including attitude towards trust; towards government institutions; towards women; towards legal norms; towards markets; towards science; towards violence, and towards financial institutions. Through econometric techniques, he shows that religious values do significantly influence economic attitudes, with a milder degree of religiosity being growth conducive, but stronger forms of religiosity leading to growth retarding economic attitudes.

a lot of things rhyme.

And that is when faced with randomness, unpredictability and lack of control, in general, a retreat takes place.

"There is no solution in the book/there is no time/there are no resources/it's not my fault/everyone else has to do x y z/don't hold me responsible for that persons suffering".

Basically any time a problem doesn't have a solution or a "elegant" solution, do a poll on how many scientists/innovators/business leaders/engineers will avoid it or not take responsibility for orchestrating an organized response to hold the space, until a solution is found. Its not in their training. So the majority just retreat. Into their work. "Doing" science/tech provides a very easy path to detachment. And then that detachment gets defended in all kinds of misguided ways, causing more confusion and misunderstandings as can be seen in this specific debate. But it applies in all debates.

Religious systems are much older and they have learnt to occupy the space when things get unpredictable. They will be there when people get cancer holding hands. They will offer rituals and prayer. They will be there praying with soldiers about to enter the battlefield and die. They will be there after they die. They will show up when people have health issues/financial issues/relationship issues. Do they fix all the problems? No. But all problems can't be fixed.

Showing up and holding the space and having something to offer and doing it in an organized and institutional way until a solution is available is what is missing.

All religious systems, not just the Abrahamic ones, people are trained for years to not run away from suffering but hold ground and have something to offer. Its not easy and can't be done without training.

Very few Fred Rodgers are produced by science and engineering institutions.

What is produced instead is mockery of religious systems, the uneducated, the misguided, the ignorant. And it naturally creates more issues.