Science, modernity, and the Muslim world

Abstract

Modernity and the Muslim World consists of fourteen essays which describe the glorious period of Muslim science in the Middle Ages and its subsequent and rapid decline. Some of the causes of its decline are underlined. The intent is not to disparage religion, which seems to have held back the development of science in the Muslim world. It is rather to encourage open-mindedness and to promote the relinquishing of defensiveness in religion in which most of the Muslim world appears to indulge freely and without any reserve.