Mr Bolden was trekking through the Mideast on the First Anniversary of the Barack Obama Let's Invent History speech in Cairo. Apparently Mr Bolden has studied history at the same academy of history-as-creative-non-fiction as Mr Obama. If anything the NASA Administrator is even more convinced of the fictive view of Muslims as Great Scientists and Technicians than is the president.
Keeping his poker face firmly epoxied in place, the Administrator, who to date is best known for the retrogressive step of cancelling the Constellation program and condemning the US to paying the Russians to boost Americans to the International Space Station, averred that the Muslims joining with the civilized world in space exploration and exploitation would be an even greater leap for mankind than was Neil Armstrong's first, small step on the moon. In and of itself that opinion overly qualifies Mr Bolden for the "What a Maroon!" prize.
Even if the truth is damaging to the self-esteem of Muslims collectively, there is no historical truth to the conclusion that Islam played a key role in the scientific or mathematical developments of the human race. What is true is that Islam for a brief and shining moment, while Europe was caught in the chaos of the early Medieval period, did serve as a custodian of classical knowledge lost to the West and a transmission belt from India of such key concepts as the use of zero as a place holder. It is also true that people in Islamic dominated regions (often Jews, who were even more despised in Europe than within the lands of the mosques) did make contributions in chemistry, astronomy and medicine.
While important, these contributions were not major. More importantly, the period during which the Lands of the One Faith, Pure and True were allowed by custom and context to push the envelope of knowledge was brief, less than a century. Then the shutters of theologically imposed ignorance clamped down.
These shutters have not been raised to the current day. Nor can they be raised given the pervasive belief within Islam that nothing can happen without the express will of Allah. No chemical reaction, no movement of a sub-atomic particle or a galaxy, can occur unless willed by the supernatural, by Allah.
This means, quite simply, that no true science can be undertaken in an Islamic culture. The requirement that the supernatural be invoked in every case means that there can be no fixed laws of physics, or chemistry, or biology. There cannot be even the approximation of truth admitted by science in the West. No hypothesis can be formed and tested, validated or invalidated by observation or experimentation, as there can be no certainty that the Great Ju-Ju will not change its mind next time around.
A good Muslim cannot in good conscious accept the existence of even such a bedrock of physics (and necessary tool of the space program) as Newtons Three Laws of Motion. A good Muslim would have to say, for example, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction--if Allah wills." Or, he would have to assert, "If Allah wills, gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between bodies."
Muslims may be able to enjoy the benefits of Western science as engineered into useful technologies by people in the West and East alike, they may even, as in Iran, take technologies and discoveries made elsewhere and add local modifications, but there is no role in basic science or even most technologies for Muslims--unless they reject the primacy of Allah, which automatically casts them out of the community of believers. (And, subjects them to a death sentence carried out by Men Of Total Faith.)
A year or so back there was some buzz about the important work being carried out by Muslim clerics and technicians which was apropos of their role in the space program. The men were concerned about just how a good Muslim could properly orient himself toward Mecca as required five times a day should that believer find himself in orbit. Unfortunately the buzz subsided before an answer was vouchsafed to the eagerly waiting world.
If the foregoing is illustrative of the level of contribution Muslims might make to humankind's further ventures into space, it is quite evident that Mr Bolden might have best stayed at home. It is self-evident that "feeling good" about Muslim "contributions" may sound nice to the fuzzy minds of the multi-culturally sensitive folks of the US and elsewhere, but a bitter, blunt reality remains unchallenged.
That ground truth is Islam and science are even more mutually exclusive than are Christianity and science. Christians and Jews as well as members of other faith communities have made many quite creative accommodations with science and its fruits. Even those Christians who are absolutely opposed to the neo-synthesis and view the Darwin/Wallace hypothesis of evolution with the same warmth that Count Dracula embraced the Cross have made adjustments in their understandings of the Bible and its derivative theologies which permit them to engage in useful, genuine science.
Muslims, good Muslims, Muslims who accept the Koran and other sacred writings as the ultimate governors of life and belief cannot make the same sort of accommodations, creative adjustments which allow science and faith to coexist as have Christians and Jews, Hindus and Buddhists. To do so would be to deny the absolute supremacy of Allah, and this is to reject Islam root and branch.
Mr Bolden and his boss in the Oval are "Maroons" not because they seek to extend an open hand to Muslims, to offer friendship and understanding. They deserve the "Maroon" award because the understanding they seek shows a total lack of understanding as to the nature of Islam, the totalism of its belief structure, and the result that there can be no meeting of minds between good Muslims and the West.
In a very real and basic way, both Mr Bolden and Mr Obama are showing complete disrespect for Islam when the outreach both have espoused presupposes a willingness on the part of Muslims to abandon the very center of their faith--the complete primacy of Allah in all affairs of the universe and human life. They fail to realize that no good Muslim can respond to the outreach except at peril of eternal damnation to hell.
What Maroons!
No comments:
Post a Comment