Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Suicidal Empathy and the Impending Death of Western Reason
AMUSE on X ^ | 1 Jun, 2025 | @AMUSE

Posted on 06/02/2025 8:18:38 AM PDT by MtnClimber

Humanity’s trajectory once bent toward progress in a region now dominated by stagnation. Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Levant, these were the fonts of civilization. They birthed the first laws, invented writing, pioneered math, and constructed monumental architecture that still defies modern imitation. Yet these once-dazzling societies, upon embracing Islam, began a long, measured descent. A faith that proclaimed itself a new revelation to mankind did not elevate these societies beyond their pagan pasts, it arrested their evolution and, more gravely, outlawed much of the progress they had already achieved. Inquiry became heresy. Innovation became blasphemy. The gears of advancement, once in motion, were deliberately broken and declared forbidden. I write this today as a warning to the West: by inviting the least capable Islamic migrants to our shores under the guise of compassion, we are engaging in what Gad Saad rightly calls suicidal empathy. The result will not be a Westernization of the migrants, but rather an Islamization of the West. And as the West begins to resemble the Islamic world, intellectually stagnant, socially repressive, and ideologically intolerant, the danger becomes existential.

This claim, though radical to contemporary ears, deserves careful scrutiny. The historical pattern is difficult to ignore: regions that accepted Islam did not flourish anew, but rather dimmed. The Arabization and Islamization of these once-thriving lands correlated not with a renaissance of reason, but with its recession. The culprit, critics argue, lies not merely in colonialism or Western hegemony, but in Islam’s doctrinal architecture: the subordination of reason to revelation, the sacralization of rigid legal codes, and the exaltation of the warrior prophet.

By the time of Muhammad’s death in 632 CE, the Arabian Peninsula had been unified under a new religious regime. The Quraysh tribe, once mercantile and cosmopolitan, had been transformed by Muhammad’s campaigns of conquest and conversion. He negotiated theology like a warlord bartering for loyalty. Early surahs exhibit tolerance and pluralism. Later surahs, those post-Hijrah, commanded subjugation. Even the infamous Satanic Verses incident, where Muhammad briefly acknowledged pagan deities, suggests a strategic theology willing to mutate for political and military advantage.

Before Islam, the ancient Near East was a beacon of advancement. Egypt excelled in medicine, mathematics, and monumental engineering. Babylon produced the Code of Hammurabi, the world’s first known legal charter. Persia boasted administrative sophistication and early declarations of human rights, such as the Cyrus Cylinder. The Levant gave us the alphabet. Pre-Islamic Arabia revered poetry, trade, and oral tradition, its Mu’allaqat rival any poetic canon in linguistic grace.

Islam’s arrival did not ignite these traditions, it engulfed them. Libraries burned. Intellectuals fled or were silenced. Over time, the Islamic doctrine of abrogation rendered early messages of peace obsolete, replaced with mandates for conquest. Islam offered spiritual certainty at the cost of intellectual curiosity. The cultural mood shifted from open exchange to doctrinal enforcement.

While, a brief, so-called Golden Age emerged under early caliphates this window of intellectual flowering owed more to the translation of Greek, Persian, and Indian texts than to original Islamic teachings. Once Islam’s orthodox theologians regained primacy, the window shut. Imam al-Ghazali’s polemic The Incoherence of the Philosophers condemned reason as impotent against revelation. He declared mathematics useful, but philosophy dangerous. Thus, the medieval Islamic world extinguished its own Enlightenment before it could begin.

The West, meanwhile, began to rise. Europe’s Renaissance, though birthed from its own struggles with dogma, ultimately severed the chain that bound truth to authority. The Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, each reaffirmed the role of reason, experimentation, and liberty in human affairs. Islam, by contrast, institutionalized the madrassa model: memorization over inquiry, conformity over creativity. Where the West forged microscopes, telescopes, and parliaments, much of the Islamic world doubled down on Hadith authentication and Quranic exegesis.

The decline is evident in modern metrics. The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) comprises over 1.8 billion people, yet contributes less than 5 percent of global scientific output. Nobel laureates in science from the Muslim world can be counted on one hand. By contrast, tiny Israel, with a population under 10 million, boasts more scientific laureates and patents annually than the entire Arab world.

Critics like Harvard’s Eric Chaney and physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy attribute this intellectual deficit to the entrenchment of clerical authority and the devaluation of critical thought. Education in the Islamic world often revolves around Quran memorization. Religious scholars (ulema) dominate intellectual life. Even in secular institutions, a latent reverence for dogma hinders dissent. In many countries, questioning religious orthodoxy is a punishable offense.

Consider the Arab Human Development Reports of the early 2000s. Produced by Arab intellectuals themselves, these reports bemoaned a “knowledge deficit” so severe it posed an existential risk. One report noted that Spain translates more books annually than the entire Arab world has translated in a millennium. Another observed that scientific publication from Muslim-majority countries represented just 1 percent of the global total.

The decline is not confined to science. Gender inequality is institutionalized through Sharia. The Quran allocates women half the inheritance of men. Their legal testimony is worth less. In countries like Saudi Arabia and Yemen, women needed male guardians to travel until recently, and in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan today, women are barred from education altogether. This systematic exclusion of half the population from full intellectual and civic participation further retards social development....SNIP


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: jihad

1 posted on 06/02/2025 8:18:38 AM PDT by MtnClimber
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Islam’s very first step was that of violence aimed at the decimation of any people that stood in its path of conquest.


2 posted on 06/02/2025 8:18:56 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Islam is not compatible with the US Constitution. They should be made to swear allegiance to the Constitution over Islam or be denied entry and citizenship, which could be revoked if proven that their oath was a lie.


3 posted on 06/02/2025 8:36:17 AM PDT by RatRipper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Couple that with centuries of inbreeding . . .


4 posted on 06/02/2025 8:46:10 AM PDT by fella ("As it was before Noah so shall it be again," )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Couple that with centuries of inbreeding . . .


5 posted on 06/02/2025 8:47:46 AM PDT by fella ("As it was before Noah so shall it be again," )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

.


6 posted on 06/02/2025 10:02:30 AM PDT by sauropod (Make sure Satan has to climb over a lot of Scripture to get to you. John MacArthur Ne supra crepidam)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Bookmark


7 posted on 06/02/2025 10:47:07 AM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you is how they. control you. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: RatRipper
"They should be made to swear allegiance to the Constitution over Islam..."

Even if they were to forswear Islam, the principle of taqqiya condones (at best, demands at worst) lying to the infidel. Any oath of allegiance to anything other than Islam is void to them.

Not to mention that leaving Islam marks them as apostates, subject to a death penalty.

8 posted on 06/02/2025 12:08:20 PM PDT by castlebrew (Gun Control means hitting here you're aiming!))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

And they turned the breadbasket of the Roman Empire- North Africa- into arid and semi-arid deserts


9 posted on 06/02/2025 5:37:41 PM PDT by arthurus (covfefe c)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson