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The author's Attribution of the statistics, he reports, to a religious cause is a good example of tunnel vision, which ignores all inconvenient factors, to sustain a hypothesis. Whether invention or rediscovery fueled the great Islamic civilizations in the Middle Ages, there is no question that they reflected a much higher level of mental awareness than is now witnessed in many of the same countries. However, the religion is the same.

What is not the same is the fact that the Mongol conquests resulted in one of the greatest brain drains in history. The leadership group was simply massacred. Those left are the descendants--in many cases--of the lower classes. The Moslems of today may, on average, compare poorly with the upper classes of the West, just as they would compare poorly with the upper classes of their own history. On the other hand, there are many non Moslems, right here in America, who while exposed to formal education for generations, would perform on the same low level as the writer records.

I also think that if you tested the new immigrants--both legal and illegal--from South of the border, you would find similar sad results among the "Hispanic" Catholics. While the Cuban Catholics in Miami--many of whom come from middle and upper class backgrounds--would statistically fall within the same norms as mainstream rooted Americans.

William Flax

"Whether invention or rediscovery fueled the great Islamic civilizations in the Middle Ages, there is no question that they reflected a much higher level of mental awareness than is now witnessed in many of the same countries. However, the religion is the same. "

As I understand this, the religion is “not” the same, and that’s the foundation for the author’s claim that culture/religion is the cause of the decline. The vast majority of great Arab achievements preceded Islam, with others coming immediately after its introduction or were actually creations brought to Arab nations.

"the fact that the Mongol conquests resulted in one of the greatest brain drains in history"

That looks like wild speculation rather than fact to me. Probably half the races have undergone similar invasions, and I’m not aware of any respected studies that claim a “brain drain” generally results from conquest. The only exception that I'm aware of is the Khmer Rouge (which my wife survived BTW).

The author is attributing the Muslims poor performance to culture rather than genetics. For instance Jews have arguably achieved the most in the US, along with Asians, and both cultures press their children into deferred gratification and higher education . The author’s belief is not “tunnel vision”. It’s just that he favors an environmental/cultural explanation over an unsupported hypothesis that Arabs lost the contribution of smart people to their gene pool in war a millennium ago and never recovered.

there is no question that they reflected a much higher level of mental awareness than is now witnessed in many of the same countries. However, the religion is the same.

Wrong -- even until the 12th century there was a substantial Christian population in the Middle East -- Lebanon was almost entirely Christian and they were at least 30% in Syria, what is now Iraq etc. however their numbers dwindled steadily and with the decrease in the number of Christians came the decline of those nations