Within intellectual and knowledge dialogues aimed at opening issues of heritage and modernity in a contemporary context, Al-Jazeera Net hosts Professor Ahmed T.

Coro is a professor of political science at San Diego State University, and he is a researcher and academic with publications that left a major debate in the Western and Arab academic arena, as he published a book entitled "Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey" in 2009 and was translated into Arabic under Title "Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States of America and France".

He also has a recent book, "Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison" published in 2019, which is under translation into Arabic under the title "Islam, Authoritarianism and Backwardness: A Global and Historical Comparison", both authors are from the Cambridge University publication.

Our dialogue with Kuru touches on the basic ideas of his latest book by virtue of the fact that it provides a pioneering vision about a historical era that has pawned Islamic civilization, especially as it sheds light on an important idea related to the relationship of scholars to power and its implications for the prevailing cognitive structure of Islamic civilization.

This study shows the importance of the independence of the Muslim world, who was a merchant of a certain historical period, and his transformation into a follower of the Sultan, and the implications of that on the civilizational structure of Islam.

The dialogue also includes Kuru's viewpoint on the process of formation of the sultanate etiquette, as well as the role of printing in building the knowledge structure in the West and the Islamic world, as well as giving his view on the mechanisms of resuming the rise in the Islamic world.

To the dialogue:

In your book "Islam, Authoritarianism and Backwardness", you described the situation of Islamic countries that are suffering from a political, economic and social crisis in the first part, and then I began to show the historical reasons. Are the roots of our problems linked to history?

Thank you very much for this interview.

I am glad that my new book is now being translated into Arabic (via the Arab Research and Publishing Network), as well as into Bosnian, Indonesian and Persian.

I am a political scientist, not a historian, and from here my book begins to ask the question: Why do Muslim-majority countries have higher levels of authoritarianism and lower levels of social and economic development compared to global averages?

This question becomes even more puzzling when my book sheds light on history and shows that Muslims were philosophically and economically superior to Western Europeans between the ninth and eleventh centuries.

Muslims were philosophically and economically superior to Western Europeans between the ninth and eleventh centuries

My book criticizes both popular interpretations of the problems of the Muslim world.

Where the first interpretation sees Islam as the culprit.

This is denied by my book, which shows that Islam has historically been completely compatible with development.

As for the second explanation, it is that Western colonialism is the main source of the problems of the Islamic world.

In fact, my book addresses in detail the negative effects of Western colonialism.

But my study confirms that when colonialism began in the late eighteenth century, the Islamic world was already experiencing a scientific and economic stagnation.

When colonialism began in the late eighteenth century, the Islamic world was already experiencing a scientific and economic stagnation.

My own approach is based on the relationships between the political, religious, economic and intellectual classes.

In the early days of Islamic history, the Islamic world had interacting bourgeois and intellectual classes.

At that time, Islamic scholars were mostly independent from state authority.

But after the middle of the eleventh century, an alliance between scholars and state power began to emerge.

The ulema-state alliance gradually marginalized the intelligentsia and merchants in the following centuries.

Islamic scholars were mostly independent from state authority, but after the middle of the eleventh century, the alliance between scholars and state power began to emerge.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some reformist rulers ended their alliance with scholars and attacked scholars in the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and many other Muslim-majority countries.

However, these reformist rulers were not able to solve their country's problems because these rulers were mostly from military backgrounds and were therefore also anti-intellectual and anti-bourgeois.

As a result, the intellectuals and merchants continue to be marginalized to this day in the Islamic world.

The book "Islam, Authoritarianism and Backwardness: A Global and Historical Comparison" by Academician Coro

In short, I had to do a historical analysis because the Muslim world is largely stuck in history, in terms of major class relationships and pro-authoritarian ideas.

Only after critical analysis of historically entrenched class relationships and ideas can Muslims move beyond history and adapt to their current conditions.

In your recent studies, you give great attention to merchants in the Islamic civilization, and that the scholar, when he played the role of merchant, was independent of the state, which contributed to the flourishing of Islamic civilization.

How is that?

During the "golden age" of economics and science, between the eighth and eleventh centuries, Muslims had productive merchants and scholars.

At that time, Western Europe was under the control of the military aristocracy and the Catholic clergy, and had no effective merchants or scholars.

During this period, scholars in Islam were trying to a large extent to preserve their financial independence from the state authorities, and they considered linking close ties with the state to be a motive for corruption.

This situation had a historical background. In the middle of the seventh century, a civil war broke out between the Rashidun Caliph Ali bin Abi Talib and Mu’awiyah bin Abi Sufyan, the governor of Damascus, which was followed by many tragedies, including the killing of thousands and the killing of Hussein bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him. It led to the resentment of Shiites and many Sunni Muslims with the relationship between political authority and religious morality.

The differences between the political and religious authorities at that time were evident, not only in the lives of Shiite scholars but also among prominent Sunni scholars such as the founders of the four schools of jurisprudence, due to their rejection of the demands of the political rulers.

Jaafar al-Sadiq was poisoned, Abu Hanifa died in prison, Imam Malik was flogged, al-Shafi’i was arrested and chained, and Ahmed bin Hanbal was tortured in prison.

A historian reviewed 3,900 scholars between the eighth and mid-eleventh centuries, and concluded that more than 90% of the scholars or their families work in the private sectors, and most of them work in commerce, only a small part of the scholars, or about 9% of them, worked for the state during this period.

The existence of dynamic merchants and independent scholars has left a vibrant intellectual environment in the Islamic world.

Muslim philosophers have made great contributions in various fields, such as mathematics, optics, and medicine.

Muslim merchants also led a commercial and agricultural boom.

They invented economic instruments like check and draft.

Dynamic merchants and independent scholars have left a vibrant intellectual environment in the Islamic world, and most scholars in the past worked in the private sector.

Was the Islamic civilization at its peak Arab or Persian?

The Islamic civilization in its golden era was neither an Arab nor a Persian civilization, it was a civilization that was able to include many ethnic and religious groups, and the golden age of Islamic civilization was characterized by the contribution of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, who were inspired by the teachings of Islam, especially with regard to time management, cleanliness and equality.

This era also witnessed contributions from Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims, as well as openness to Greek, Sasanian, Egyptian, Indian and Chinese science and technology.

You indicated in your book that the great transformation of the Islamic civilization was due to the alliance of scholars and the state, how did it start?

A multidimensional transformation began in the eleventh century.

In economic terms, the feudal system of centralized land distribution and tax farming is replacing the market economy.

Politically, the Ghaznavid and Seljuk Sultanates made the state structure more militarized.

On the religious side, the Abbasid caliphs, especially al-Qadir in God and then al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah, declared the doctrine of the "prevailing doctrine" against the Shiites and the Mu'tazila.

These shifts weakened the merchant class and made Sunni scholars ready to accept state patronage.

The Seljuk Minister Nizam al-Mulk established a network of schools called the Nizamiyya, and these schools became the institutional basis for the “dominant Sunni sect” and the alliance of scholars and the state.

The newly emerging coalition of scholars and state began to marginalize merchants and intellectuals in Central Asia, Iran, and Iraq in the eleventh century.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Mamluk Sultanate popularized this Seljuk model of the Alliance of the State of Scholars in Syria and Egypt.

In later centuries, the Ottoman Empire institutionalized this alliance in Anatolia and the Balkans, while the Safavid Empire built a Shiite version of the alliance of scholars and the state in Iran.

Many scholars linked Al-Ghazali to his being responsible for the intellectual stagnation in Islamic civilization, and the name Muhammad Abid al-Jabri was associated with this thesis by virtue of his position on philosophy and philosophers.

Was Al-Ghazali behind reducing the role of reason in Islamic civilization?

My book provided a detailed analysis of the ideas of al-Mawardi, al-Ghazali, and Ibn Taymiyyah as defenders of the alliance of the state and the scholars, and the ideas of Ibn Rushd and Ibn Khaldun as presenting alternative viewpoints.

My book also deals with the ideas of some contemporary scholars, one of whom is Muhammad Abed al-Jabri who criticizes al-Ghazali for his marginalization of rationalism and the spread of Sufism in the Islamic world.

"Al-Ghazali has left a deep wound inside the Arab mind that continues to bleed," Al-Jabri says.

Many Western scholars define Al-Ghazali as one of the most influential figures in Islamic history.

This is because of al-Ghazali's prominent role in shaping Sunni Islam after the eleventh century, by excluding philosophy and including Sufism.

However, it is not enough to explain the decline of the Islamic world by focusing only on Al-Ghazali, who was part of a larger factor that is the alliance of scholars with the state.

Al-Ghazali received support from and contributed to this coalition.

His main contribution to the alliance of scholars with the state was the fatwas of some philosophers to be sentenced to death.

How did the Sasanian civilization influence Islamic political thought, and did this contribute to the advancement or backwardness of Islamic civilization?

After the middle of the eleventh century, an alliance of scholars and the state needed new ideas to justify its political and religious dominance.

He used some Sasanian principles, one of which was the famous wisdom of Ardashir, the founding Sasanian king who lived in the third century (where) he says “Religion and royal authority are twins.” Many scholars have presented this Sasanian proverb as being modern.

Post-eleventh century scholars have reinterpreted the verse "on you who is most important" in the Qur’an to justify the alliance of scholars and the state.

In his important book “Al-Siyasa al-Sharia” Ibn Taymiyyah interpreted this verse as appealing to Muslims’s obedience to scholars and princes, although this phrase does not explicitly refer to any of the princes or scholars.

See T.

Koru that dynamic merchants and independent scholars have created a vibrant intellectual environment in the Islamic world (Al-Jazeera)

How did the invasions affect the Islamic civilization?

From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, Muslim countries witnessed bloody invasions by the Mongols, the Crusaders, and Timur.

These invasions led many Muslims to seek safety from countries of a military nature, to shelter against the invaders, and scholars have provided interpretations of the causes of the massacres committed.

Moreover, the Crusaders ’involvement in the" religious war "had an echo of Islamic sentiment.

In short, the foreign invasions enabled the consolidation of the ulema and state alliance in several sultanates, including the Ayyubids, Mamluks, and Ottomans.

Foreign invasions enabled the strengthening of the ulema-state alliance in many sultanates, including the Ayyubids, Mamluks, and Ottomans.

One of the popular ideas is that the Ottoman Caliphate was distinguished by the military course, and this was at the expense of other aspects of civilization, which can be touched in the Islamic printing process, is this true?

The Ottomans, along with the Safavids and the Mughals, dominated the Islamic world from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

During this period, Western Europeans used the printing press, sea compass, and gunpowder in their scientific, geographic, and military developments.

The Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals only used gunpowder because they were military empires that had neglected scientific and geographical developments.

Moreover, scholars saw the printing press as a threat to their religious and educational monopoly.

Muslims did not print a single book from 1455 (when the first European book was printed) until 1729 (when the first Ottoman book was printed).

In the eighteenth century, the Ottomans established some printing presses, but they printed very few books.

In that century, Western Europeans printed one billion books, while the Ottomans printed only fifty thousand books!

As a result, by 1800, the estimated literacy rate was thirty-one percent in Western Europe, compared to only one percent in the Ottoman Empire.

The "illiteracy" gap has continued to widen considerably between Western countries and Muslim-majority countries to this day.

The "illiteracy" gap has continued to widen considerably between Western countries and Muslim-majority countries to this day

In a final word, how can we resume the process of renaissance in the Islamic civilization?

Many thanks for your deep and thought-provoking questions.

You helped me explain some important aspects of my book.

Let me briefly answer your last question.

In order to achieve "renaissance", Muslims need reformist intellectuals and the bourgeois classes, who are able to achieve a balance between the authority of scholars and the powers of the state.

While reforming their institutions and ideas, Muslims do not need to focus on imitating Western models.

Alternatively, Muslims can take inspiration from their prosperous era during the ninth and eleventh centuries.

By re-establishing diversity, dynamism and productivity, which contributes to enabling Muslims to find a path for them to achieve their renaissance in our time.