Islam and Science

Recently there has been some controversy surrounding how our society should respond to Islam.  Should we see Islam as a force retarding the progress of civilization and particularly science?  Is it possible or desirable to extend tolerance to the intolerant?  Why should we allow them privileges that they don't extend to non-Muslims in their own countries?

It is alleged that Islam slows down the progress of science.  Indeed the Muslim world produces fewer scientific papers per capita than the world average.  Some have suggested that this is because they are poor, but this is an oversimplification.  The Muslim world is, on the whole, comparable in per capita output to the world average.

It seems that most of the science performed in the Muslim world occurs in Turkey and Iran.  If you compare the scientific output of Turkey to that of a non-Muslim country with a comparable per capita output, Turkey does well.  However, if you compare Saudi Arabia to Portugal you get a different picture.  Turkey was an example that I chose because it stands out as being a particularly successful Muslim country when it comes to science.  If I had found that even in this country was an under-performer taking the level of economic development into account, then this would be a serious indictment of Islam when it came to science.  As it turns out, this is not the case.

However, this doesn't quite let Islam off the hook.  Turkey has a unique history among Muslim countries.  They have a government that scores high on international comparisons as far as having democratic institutions.  However, there is a history of the military intervening in order to maintain a secular government.  What would happen if I took Indonesia, for example.  I chose this country because it is the most populous predominantly Muslim country.  It is difficult to do a comparison.  In any case the results would be highly dependent on which country you chose.  Pakistan produced more papers than Indonesia despite having a lower population and per capita GDP.  Bangladesh produced more than Indonesia, but not nearly as much as Pakistan.  India outproduced all of these countries even when population is taken into account.

In short Muslims may on the whole be somewhat less predisposed to support science than average over the entire world.  However, there is widespread variation between countries that cannot be explained by either religion or economics.  Economics goes a long way toward explaining why the U.S. outperforms Turkey even when population is taken into account.

As for the other questions, I believe that we should be tolerant.  The question we need to place above all others is what kind of a place we want to live in.  Do we want to live in an intolerant country?  I don't think so.  Therefore we must take care that we don't become an intolerant country.  This is not something that we are doing for them.  It's for ourselves.  Our country is not likely to have a Muslim majority any time soon.  Even if Islam poses a threat to our liberal traditions we have more to lose from violating the separation of Church and state than we have to gain.