The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis

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 Mind solves 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… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member SamTekoa

This is a very good book. It is not difficult to read. You may appreciate it more if you have some background in Aristotle and Aquinas. Maybe just a few points that were overgeneralized nevertheless very helpful in understanding the mindset of many of today's Muslims.

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LibraryThing member gottfried_leibniz

An excellent book, it might be difficult for someone within this faith to take and read this book. The author talks about the roots of problems/issues in the Islamic world. Basically, differences in theology, convictions and not having rationality in their theology.

I learned about the two sects

within Islamic theology if you're familiar with Philosophy. This would be interesting and easier read, learned also about Al-Ghazali and Averroes. You'll enjoy this book if you are into theology, philosophy, and history.

Deus Vult,
Gottfried

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LibraryThing member antiquary

This book is an extension of an argument made by earlier writers (that vocal rationalists L. Sprague de Camp for one) that the critical division between Islamic and Christian culture came when al-Ghazzali successfully argued that revelation (as well as mystical experience) was superior to reason,

while afterwards Aquinas and others argued reason was compatible with revelation. My own opinion is that although one branch of Islamic thought was undoubtedly bot hostile to reason and bigoted, the Christian tendency in the later middle ages in practical terms was also becoming less tolerant rather than more; the rationalist reaction against bigoted Christian in fact appealed to example of relatively tolerant Muslim rulers (even if idealized) and the enlightenment began to influence the Muslim world only perhaps a century after it began to influence the west. The contrast is not as sharp as Reilly supposes.

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LibraryThing member gottfried_leibniz

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