On the Soapbox

Slashdot reported on a government-endorsed exhibit in the UK titled 1001 Inventions, which spotlights the contributions of "Muslim Heritage" to the world.

History serves two purposes: cultural heritage and lessons. While giving a nod to cultural heritage is important to personal identity, it does not solve problems and it does not help society advance. On the other hand, learning what we did right and what we did wrong does help society advance. I have no doubt that this exhibit was created for the purpose of soothing tensions with Muslim culture, but if such is the goal, then harping on the importance of cultural heritage will not accomplish that goal. Mending the gap and the tensions ultimately requires a fundamental social reform of Muslim society, which is by no means an easy task and which will require confronting the deeply-embedded fundamentalist threads of Islam. This is not the sort of problem that can be solved by putting lipstick on a pig. Fawning over one's past glory is no substitute for forward-looking reform and progress, and what Muslim cultures should be extracting from their past is the lesson that the relatively liberal and enlightened rule that they enjoyed a millennium ago was the source of their past greatness. The recent rise of China came from market and political reforms*, not from obsessing over its past glory or cultural inclusiveness.

In addition, there are a few other peripheral problems with this:

• If you read some of the "inventions", you will find that a number of them originated in other parts of the world, but they were popularized by Muslims or introduced to the West by them.
• If anything, this exhibit shows the stagnation of the Muslim world. What good are contributions from antiquity if they have sat still for the past several centuries?

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* Although much more political reform can and should be done, China is nevertheless much more politically open than it was two decades ago.