# Why is so much of the Islamic world backward and ignorant? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [September 13, 2016, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872 "2016-09-13T16:56:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Defective\_Detective](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d2c977/32.png) [@Defective\_Detective](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defective_Detective)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/1 "2016-09-13T16:56:19Z")
“…it’s fair to say that in many countries the Islamic masses remain comparatively backward and ignorant.” Cecil. Seriously? With the way black folks are treated in the USA? With the way female victims of rape are uniformly ignored or disbelieved? With the way our representatives spend most of their time raising funds for re-election rather than doing something useful? With the way we slaughtered and marginalized the native Americans? Or how we, one of the top 10 countries in the world (by GDP per capita), refuse to provide health care for all our citizens? And seeing how many people are backing _Donald Trump for President??_ I find it rather ignorant that anyone in this country could call the citizens of any other country “comparatively backward and ignorant.” ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/2 "2016-09-13T17:18:43Z")
> [@Defective\_Detective](#): > > With the way female victims of rape are uniformly ignored or disbelieved? Perhaps we could stone them instead. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Memnon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Memnon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Memnon)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/3 "2016-09-13T17:21:49Z")
> [@Defective\_Detective](#): > > “…it’s fair to say that in many countries the Islamic masses remain comparatively backward and ignorant.” > > Cecil. Seriously? > > With the way black folks are treated in the USA? > > With the way female victims of rape are uniformly ignored or disbelieved? > > With the way our representatives spend most of their time raising funds for re-election rather than doing something useful? > > With the way we slaughtered and marginalized the native Americans? > > Or how we, one of the top 10 countries in the world (by GDP per capita), refuse to provide health care for all our citizens? > > And seeing how many people are backing _Donald Trump for President??_ > > I find it rather ignorant that anyone in this country could call the citizens of any other country “comparatively backward and ignorant.” I’m offended, therefore you’re wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Defective\_Detective](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d2c977/32.png) [@Defective\_Detective](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defective_Detective)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/4 "2016-09-13T17:30:46Z")
I’m not offended at all. I’m not incensed, I’m not upset, I’m not trying to insult Cecil’s column. It just seems silly to think that we’re better than anyone else. Humans are the same the world over man, and thinking “we are better than someone else” is probably the beginning of most of humanity’s problems. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/5 "2016-09-13T17:43:27Z")
[Link to column being discussed.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2454/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant) ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/6 "2016-09-13T18:23:53Z")
> [@Defective\_Detective](#): > > Humans are the same the world over man, and thinking “we are better than someone else” is probably the beginning of most of humanity’s problems. Yes, we’re all _exactly_ the same. :rolleyes: The USA is not without its problems, serious ones, but pretending that everyone in the world is playing the same game on a level field is ludicrous on the face of it. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/7 "2016-09-13T18:27:34Z")
> [@Defective\_Detective](#): > > “…it’s fair to say that in many countries the Islamic masses remain comparatively backward and ignorant.” > > Cecil. Seriously? > > With the way black folks are treated in the USA? Yes. Have you looked into the way minorities and imported workers are treated in many Arab countries? > [@](#): > > With the way female victims of rape are uniformly ignored or disbelieved? Simply not true. Example: the Duke case. > [@](#): > > With the way our representatives spend most of their time raising funds for re-election rather than doing something useful? So you’d rather a dictatorship? > [@](#): > > With the way we slaughtered and marginalized the native Americans? Until recently, extermination and slavery was the order of the day. > [@](#): > > Or how we, one of the top 10 countries in the world (by GDP per capita), refuse to provide health care for all our citizens? Can’t argue with you there. Do note that UHC is a very recent invention. But tell me, is this widespread across the Islamosphere? > [@](#): > > And seeing how many people are backing _Donald Trump for President??_ At least they have a real vote. > [@](#): > > I find it rather ignorant that anyone in this country could call the citizens of any other country “comparatively backward and ignorant.” Are you sure you’re not demonstrating your own ignorance? > [@](#): > > It just seems silly to think that we’re better than anyone else You’re fundamentally misinterpreting both the question and Cecil’s answer. Over the past 300 years the West has done markedly better than the Islamosphere. If you were to look at the world of 1100 AD, you would say the reverse. As stockbrokers say, past performance is no indicator of the future. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/8 "2016-09-13T18:30:29Z")
This thread displays a common fallacy in political discussions - the idea that because Entity A and Entity B both have “problems,” that their problems are therefore of the same severity or of the same nature. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/9 "2016-09-13T18:39:55Z")
> [@Defective\_Detective](#): > > Humans are the same the world over man Internally, yes, but in outward behavior, laws or customs, no. ---
**Author:** ![Defective\_Detective](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d2c977/32.png) [@Defective\_Detective](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defective_Detective)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/10 "2016-09-13T20:03:46Z")
I’ve lived in other countries long enough to learn five different languages (without going to school for any of them), but you may call me ignorant if you like. It is a relative term, after all. One thing that strikes me is that the majority of people in \*every \*country think their nation is better than the rest. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/11 "2016-09-13T20:05:45Z")
> [@Defective\_Detective](#): > > I’ve lived in other countries enough to learn five different languages without going to school for any of them, but you may call me ignorant if you like (it is a relative term, after all). > > I meet people in \*every \*country who think their nation is better than \*all \*the rest. How likely do you think it is that all of them are correct? About as likely as all of them being exactly equal when it comes to human rights and scientific development, I’d say. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/12 "2016-09-13T20:14:40Z")
As a commentary on Cecil’s column, the OP is rather impressively off target. The column is in no way a comparison of the relative virtues of the US and Islamic countries. Indeed, the US isn’t mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/13 "2016-09-13T21:33:25Z")
Did we read the same article? Cecile starts with “Let’s watch the glib generalizations, Bud. The Islamic world isn’t uniformly ‘backward and ignorant.’” and the phrase immediately before the OP’s quote is prefaced with “despite a sharp increase in literacy in the past few decades” It seems to me that Cecil is being pretty fair on the issue. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2016, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/14 "2016-09-14T03:33:39Z")
Frankly I would have liked cecil to simply ask “Compared to whom?” and point out the proportion of people in the US who believe the world is a few thousand years old and that humans began with Adam and Eve. But yeah, I don’t think he really overstepped the mark. One thing to say though: the comment about the whole Arab league’s GDP being less than Spain’s is of course very much out of date now; it’s at least 2:1 now in the league’s favor, maybe 3:1 depending on who’s counting. Which is still bad in population terms, but note the Arab league includes all of the arab spring countries, and arab =/= Muslim; if we just group all the Muslim countries the data are not so one-sided. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2016, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/15 "2016-09-14T03:47:39Z")
> [@Defective\_Detective](#): > > I’m not offended at all. I’m not incensed, I’m not upset, I’m not trying to insult Cecil’s column. It just seems silly to think that we’re better than anyone else. Humans are the same the world over man, and thinking “we are better than someone else” is probably the beginning of most of humanity’s problems. Nonsense. Are you really going to sit there and say that human rights conditions in the United States are no better than they are in Saudi Arabia or Iran or Pakistan or Syria or Sudan? ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2016, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/16 "2016-09-14T08:08:21Z")
> [@Defective\_Detective](#): > > With the way female victims of rape are uniformly ignored or disbelieved? Ah yes, you’ve found the big hypocrisy. In the US, when an accusation is made which will put a guy in jail for a decade or longer, there’s an investigation into whether this actually happened instead of just locking the guy up right away. This is utterly barbaric compared to a lot of the Islamic world, where they stone the woman to death for adultery for having been raped. Or sometimes they do the super civilized thing of forcing the woman to marry her rapist to protect her honor. Sometimes I find it hard to believe how much more advanced that culture is than our own. I don’t know how we live with ourselves. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2016, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/17 "2016-09-15T02:39:22Z")
To tackle the matter a bit more seriously, some people invoke the publication of “The Incoherence of the Philosophers” (تهافت الفلاسفة Tahāfut al-Falāsifaʰ) by Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (/ɡæˈzɑːli/; Arabic: ابو حامد محمد ابن محمد الغزالي‎‎; c. 1058 – 18 December 1111, shortened as Al-Ghazali and known as Algazelus or Algazel to the Western medieval world), who attacked all forms of reasoning about God as fundamentally inconsistent with God’s almightiness. Al-Ghazali specifically did _not_ include what we would call “science” in what he opposed, but many believe that he nevertheless managed to create an anti-intellectual Weltanschauung that did much harm to progress in the Islamic world. (I only know this bare outline of the matter, and I don’t have a profound knowledge of Islam to begin with, so I am not prepared to argue the point either way, myself. Feel free to Google away.) ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2016, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/18 "2016-09-15T21:34:09Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > Al-Ghazali specifically did _not_ include what we would call “science” in what he opposed, but many believe that he nevertheless managed to create an anti-intellectual Weltanschauung that did much harm to progress in the Islamic world. But wouldn’t the West’s blind adherence to the Aristotelian worldview up until the Enlightenment be similarly limiting? ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2016, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/19 "2016-09-15T22:28:38Z")
> [@squidfood](#): > > But wouldn’t the West’s blind adherence to the Aristotelian worldview up until the Enlightenment be similarly limiting? We [got over it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance) ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2016, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872/20 "2016-09-15T22:49:33Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > We [got over it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance) Yes, that was actually my point - it’s not a question of what old learning was holding the culture back through the middle ages, both cultures had something, but rather why one culture got over it. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-so-much-of-the-islamic-world-backward-and-ignorant/765872.md?page=2)