Interesting fact of the day:
Islamic medicine was well ahead of its time when it came to the treatment of the mentally ill. the Quran demanded the those with mental illness be taken care of and treated kindly, this was reflected in how doctors of the time cared for the mentally ill and very much a departure from the attitudes of other cultures at the time where the mentally ill were demonized or quite literally treated as possessed.
Here is the specific quote from the quran translated to english:
"Do not give your property which God assigned you to manage to the insane: but feed and clothe the insane with this property and tell splendid words to them." -- Sura 4:5
#History #Islam #Musslim #Quran #Religion #Psychology #medicin #history #science @Science
@freemo Yes, Islam actually WAS ahead of its time like 1000 years ago. Somehow they regressed after then. To me it shows that the more strict the doctrine, the more backwards it gets. 1000 years ago Christianity was the strict one. In some countries here it still is, and those countries are also kinda backwards in my eyes.
@mur2501 Good point. Things definitely started to change around then. Christianity went from the 'Dark Ages' to the 'Age of Enlightenment'. Islam had that about 1000 years ago, they truly had a golden age going on. Mathematics, medicine, etc, that was at the pinnacle back then. Even the Christian world looked up to them.
I don't know what happened that it changed. Maybe governments changed and became more strict.
And we all know what happens to very strict societies... They won't be able to be creative and develop.That counts for ALL religions, not just Islam. That counts for ALL societies, regardless whether they're religious or not.
Repressive rule is never a good idea.
@benk @freemo @mur2501 @trinsec
Very interesting conversation. I very much echo @benk ‘s remark about how easy it is to get into “we are doing better therefore we are inherently better” and that Elightenment was the key to our current successes. To support that point, let’s inspect some real historical facts in a sequence:
This shows that:
What I am trying to say in so many words is this: it seems to me that scientific/technological/military advances and exploitations seem to be rather weakly correlated with cultural and political “revolutions/awakenings”. Based on that, I would be quite suspicious to say that Muslim countries struggle in the recent centuries in the realm of science because of their religion. I’d argue, they seem to be rather independent and it is something else which caused the decline. And in reverse, I personally wouldn’t look at reforming the religion in order to unlock and boost technological & scientific developments either.
But again, I am just an amateur historian and a very inconsequential policy maker, so what do I know :-).